


Burn Your Kingdom Down

by spicedpiano



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anal Sex, Angry Erik, Asphyxiation, Bloodplay, Bottom!Charles, Bottom!Erik, Captivity, Charles You Slut, Crusades, Dark, Dirty Talk, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Europe, Happy Ending, Interspecies sex (supernatural), M/M, Middle East, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, Oral Sex, Religious Conflict, Rough Sex, Somnophilia, Story within a Story, Supernatural Elements, Top!Erik, Topping from the Bottom, Vikings, Violence, War, top!Charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 66,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik’s people were brutally massacred when the Crusaders took Jerusalem.  The sole survivor, Erik fled to northern Europe, only then to be captured as a thrall by Viking raiders.  Since that day he has fought his way up to leading a group of Vikings on an invasion of the Christian mainland, killing every Crusader he can find.  But when he captures a thrall of his own, a young witch who gives his name only as Charles, he discovers that there is a darker magic than his at work - and the fate of the known world may rest in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【翻译】烧毁你的帝国](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051295) by [inlaidharp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlaidharp/pseuds/inlaidharp)



> My infinite gratitude to **Marimo** , whose ideas inspired this fic, and who became the quintessential Starving Artist in her efforts to finish her stunningly beautiful art for this fic. Thanks for our long conversations about imagery and plot and comic relief. I could never have done this without you. You’re amazeballs. Don’t you dare deny it.
> 
> Thanks also to **Tahariel** , for her constant support throughout the creation of this fic as well as her editing prowess. And thank you to **Subtilior** for tirelessly betaing this increasingly long monster of a fic. I really appreciate it!
> 
>  **Baehj2915** , thank you for your incredibly valuable input and encouragement as this story was produced. <3
> 
> Last but not least, thanks to all the denizens of the xmen-tales chat (particularly cygnaut, aesc, professor, and firstlightofeos) for helping me push through those last few word wars and get this fic done at last. :D
> 
> \--
> 
> A few important notes:
> 
> I’ve taken a few liberties here with the natural progression of history. Namely, as the existence of mutants is widely known far earlier than in canon history, many of the mutant-human tensions are happening now rather than later. In “real” history, by the 1100s the Vikings were becoming Christianized, and their empire was beginning to crumble. In this story, quite the opposite has occurred: as the Vikings utilize mutant abilities rather than burning mutants as witches as the European Christian majority does, the Vikings’ military strength is unparalleled. They have invaded a good portion of Europe and Northern Africa and are considered a force to be reckoned with. Other than things which may be affected by the altered power dynamics in Europe, I’ve tried to keep everything as historically accurate as possible. 
> 
> Please check the tags. Also, I want to warn you that **I am choosing not to use major archive warnings on this story. You read at your own risk.**
> 
> In the story, Erik uses Old Norse geographic terms like “Beiaraland.” More modern/recognizable names are in headings. The term “Serkland” refers to the Middle East, including the area around Jerusalem. “Nordmenn” = Vikings, “Sudrmenn” = everyone living south of Viking territory (i.e., everyone else).
> 
> I’ve uploaded a free playlist for download. It can be found on Tumblr [here.](http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com/post/43184483218/burn-your-kingdom-down-the-playlist-download)
> 
> To view the art masterpost, click [here](http://4xontuesdays.tumblr.com/post/43211718319/xmfc-bigbang-challenge-burn-your-kingdom-down).
> 
> \--

PART ONE

Never walk  
away from home  
ahead of your ax and sword.  
You can't feel a battle  
in your bones  
or foresee a fight. 

\- The Havamal

\--

34.

_November 1115, Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire_

[](http://imgur.com/C7NHq2R)

He dodges left, and nearly trips over the corpse that lies torn apart on the ground beneath his feet. The heel of his boot digs into the open pit of the stomach, and he uses the exposed curve of the ribcage as leverage to thrust himself forward again, his first sword blocking his opponent’s as the second swings low beneath the shield.

The blade catches the back of the man’s knee, cutting the cords which hold the leg together. His opponent stumbles, shield tilting up defensively to protect his head. Erik takes the opening when he sees it. 

The metal links of the man’s hauberk are no contest for his magic. They melt beneath his sword, and Erik feels the heat of blood on iron as if keenly as if it were spilling across his own bare skin. The acrid scent of bile and copper floods the air as he carves his blade down the center of the man’s gut, spilling its contents across the green, green grass.

The dying man groans something in a language Erik does not understand; he leaves him there and moves on. The battle is almost over. They have won - only a dozen or so of the Sudrmenn remain. They will fight to their deaths, voluntarily or otherwise. Erik has no use for prisoners.

He kills two more men by the edge of the woods. The leaves are turning gold now, and at this late hour of the day the world is a mosaic of colored glass with light shining through – blood and leaf and field and sky. The low thrum of metal underscores it all, like a taut wire running through his gut. It would be easy to reach out with his magic and turn the swords upon their owners, to kill every single one of these Sudrmenn with a single stroke. Easy, but not honorable … and the Nordmenn care for nothing so much as they care for honor. If Erik steals their chance to prove their strength and valor, he will be repaid with mutiny. 

So he lets his men take their chances with Death. They have bargains with their gods, just as Erik does with his.

Erik does not mind being a land-raider; his talent is with iron, not water. But he dislikes being this close to that city, which but twenty-two years ago saw the massacre of hundreds of his people. He has been told how they were dragged to the river and forced into the water. How those who resisted their baptism were killed, their bodies drifting pale and bloated down the Danube.

Today, their deaths are avenged. Today, Erik slays killers, and the children of killers. Their blood soaks into the earth. 

One of the Nordmenn swings an ax, cleaving a skull in two with a loud crack. Seven Sudrmenn left. Wiping his swords clean on his tunic, Erik sheaths the left blade into one of the scabbards strapped across his back. The other he keeps in hand as he walks the perimeter where forest meets field, watching for bodies that may not be quite-yet-dead, using the sword where he must. As he goes, he marks the location of his own fallen, who must be gathered and burned before dawn.

Erik might be a thrall in name, a slave in the land of ice and glacier – but he still remembers the heat of his birth, and the desert he was forged in. 

He feels it more keenly than ever here, on the battlefield, in this ragged terrain with the blood of his enemies dripping from the blade of his sword, laying siege to the barren rock and claiming his victory. None of the men who died today beneath his power saw him as a thrall. To them, he was a warrior, he was a witch, he was bringer-of-death. And the Nordmenn he leads will treat him with that same respect, having seen what he does to those who attempt to deny him it.

He passes further into the woods and the dappled light slowly darkens from gold to amber, the shadows deepening beneath the trees and amongst the tangled roots and ferns sprouting up from the forest floor. It is quieter, now, the sounds of battle muffled by the fallen leaves. Even so, the scent of blood is carried on the air. Erik tastes its copper on his tongue, as thick as if it was painted there – and the smell only grows stronger, until Erik half-expects to find himself wading through a swamp of it - to reach out, touch the bark of an oak, and have his hand come away sticky. 

His pulse is a quickening throb in his temples and the world seems as if it is beginning to steer off its axis, those shadows rising up from the ground and soaking in through his skin. Stumbling, he chokes on his own inward breath, as if he is drowning in open air, the smell of blood all but overpowering, slick and hot in the back of his throat –

The sword does not slip from his hand; he is too well-trained for that, the metal too much a part of him for him to ever be able to let it go – but he does feel a shudder prickling his scalp, sinking ice-cold teeth into his throat and turning his knuckles white around the hilt.

There, in the clearing before him, a man lies fallen. He has been dead for several hours now, his head split apart, blood and brain splattered across the dirt. His eyes are still open, gaze wide but unseeing, even as a great carrion bird tears at a wound in his neck.

[ ](http://imgur.com/csUihpg)

It’s a valravn. Erik has heard the tales, even if he has never seen one himself – but he has always been told, _you will know it when you see it,_ and know it he does. The creature is in every way like a normal raven, feathers glossy as ink, legs spindly and black, crouching down to support its weight on the dead man’s throat. It is smeared with blood, the gore still-bright on its wings, one wet bead sliding down the center of its forehead and dripping onto the flesh below it.

A moment later Erik realizes: the bird is not made of living flesh. He can see the rot at the joints, bone and cartilage peeking through. He can smell the stench of decay, honey-sweet beneath the smell of blood.

He steadies himself and finds his sword with his metal-sense, bringing it into focus. Valravne might be undead, but they can still be brought to earth with a blade. 

Erik moves forward, lifting his sword to shoulder-height. The bird will move fast. He must be prepared. The instant he brings his blade down, the creature will take flight – but in which direction? The wind is blowing south-southwest. Will the valravn fly with it, or against it? Or … no, Erik thinks. It will head east: toward the battlefield, and the scent of death. So he will strike, erring eastward, and kill the beast even as it attempts to escape.

But he hesitates too long. The valravn gives a great _screech_ and Erik moves, swinging his sword down through the air – but it is too late, the bird has already flown, streaking out over the treetops with the kind of speed that does not come from beating wings.

Erik’s blade falls onto the corpse’s face instead, splitting it down the middle like an overripe fruit. Erik swears and tugs the sword free, wiping it on the dead man’s tunic before sliding it into its scabbard. 

He suspects he hasn’t seen the last of the valravn. Valravne tend to haunt, they say. Once they catch a scent. It might be in a week, or it might be in ten years, but he will see it again.

\--

33.

They set up camp some leagues away. The smoke curling skyward from the heap of bodies they left burning behind them might draw the attention of the townspeople in Regensburg, but Erik’s men do not flinch from danger. They are Nordmenn: raiders, and warrior-born. Their sleep is light, and their sword-hands ever ready. They will always have the advantage; it is their birthright.

They build several smaller fires to roast their meat. Erik checked all the fowl as they were hunted. No valravne were felled among them, which was to be expected, but it is disappointing nonetheless. He would have liked to hang a valravn head over the flap of his tent. 

Erik sits on a log near his personal fire. It is not his by decree, but the Nordmenn tend to avoid it all the same; Erik is not sure if it is a sign of respect or fear. Perhaps it is distaste for their Serkir thrall leader. It does not make much of a difference, so long as they do as they are told. And he likes being alone. It gives him time to think – and he is close enough to the next-nearest fire to overhear the conversation among those men, if he so desires. 

He does desire. After a battle, especially one as vicious as this, it is in Erik’s best interest to assess the mood of his crew. If there is any whisper of discontent, it will be now. He settles in to eating his charred rabbit, and turns his ear to the group of soldiers closest by. 

“- how many years has it been, now?”

“Ten, isn’t it?” 

The second speaker could be Arnvid, or perhaps Hrodny the Fair. Both are simple-minded brutes, with voices like smashed rock. 

“Aye. Ten years, since King Magnus went raiding in Iraland. He’d waited out the snows with the lord of that land, a barbarian who had become his ally. And when the ice melted, they went forth – westward, toward the great Sea.”

“And then – “

“ _Wait._ I want to hear him tell it.”

A brief pause, and the storyteller continues, in the same solemn and dramatic fashion as before. “There were many battles. King Magnus ruled over all Iraland, conquering every field and shore. But the King missed his own land, in time. The North called him home, as it does all raiders who linger too long in the field of battle.”

“I heard they were attacked by Hel-shadows, and that’s how he fell.”

“No, not Hel-shadows. Men. A small group of the King’s soldiers were waiting for him in the marshes, with the supplies he would need to sail North. But the marsh was dark, and a dense fog was creeping up from the water and through the trees. The fog hid from them the enemy forces that were lying in wait for them there.”

Erik steals a quick, sidelong glance at the men gathered round that fire. They are huddled in close for warmth, still turning fish on skewers over the coals and sharing a small bowl of nuts. He was right - it _is_ Hrodny the Fair sitting just left of the storyteller. 

“The Nordmenn were unprepared. These were not the berserkers of the old sagas, mind you. Their enemy caught them at a disadvantage. King Magnus fought hard. He was a great leader, but he too fell in the melee.”

“Not before fighting on, though, even with great spears thrust through both his thighs,” someone interjects.

“True,” the storyteller says. “He fought, driving his men up out of the marsh, toward their old camp site. Too late. The enemy charged and struck from behind, an axe severing his neck.”

A few seconds’ silence, while the storyteller lets those words settle in. His expression suggests he enjoys the newly-wound tension in their little cadre. 

Then, at last –

“Some say he was buried in a church in Iraland. Some, in a field near what the barbarians call Lough. And others, that his body was gathered up with the rest by the victorious enemies and burned.”

“Unless …”

“Unless it was never found,” the storyteller concludes with a definite air of satisfaction. “So few of us escaped that ambush. Who knows what the barbarians chose to do with this dead raider king? Perhaps they left his body to rot in the fens, abandoned in the mist and boggy stink.”

“But what if that’s what happened? What if the body _weren’t_ never found?” Hrodny the Fair grumbles. “What if it weren’t never properly buried? A dead king, rotting in a pagan land. It don’t bode well.”

“No,” the storyteller says, his voice gone soft and conspiratorial once more. “No, it doesn’t bode well at all. Because if a king should die in battle ….”

Erik knows the rest. They all know this legend, even those less familiar with recent history. It is a tale the Nordmenn pass down, mother to child. Erik heard it himself not long after he first clawed his way out of the stupor of henbane, still delirious enough that when he heard the tale, he felt as if he were falling into it, as if he himself were taking flight, as if he himself had become valravn –

 _Valravne._ Born when a king or Jarl dies in battle and is left unburied – born of wild ravens who consume the dead man’s heart and gain human knowledge, human bloodlust.

[ ](http://imgur.com/wOWzGXe)

Could that truly be what Erik saw today? He has seen many incredible things since he went to the North, but none such as that. He stares into the flames of his own fire and tries to remember. All he can think about is that _smell_ , the stench of blood and rotting flesh. Perhaps it was a valravn, and perhaps not. Perhaps Erik, still woozy from the sharp heat of battle, saw things that were not there. In firelight, such creatures seem fantastical, surreal, like relics of a nightmare.

Erik finishes his rabbit and sets his bowl aside to be rinsed in the river later. And then – then he turns his ears to the rest of his men. There are campfires stretching out toward the edge of the forest, but he is only concerned with those closest. Time, after all, is a constraint. 

Of course, he cannot hear them - not naturally, anyway. But he can feel their metal: bronze and iron shields, rounded, propped up against trees and leaning by their knapsacks. Concave shields, which may, if Erik is attentive, if he concentrates, if he is _skilled_ …. Perhaps he can feel the sound reverberating off the metal. Perhaps he can translate it into speech.

He lets his eyes fall closed, blocking out the sense of sight to focus as much as he can on what he can hear. He stretches his magic out through the metal around him: the long blade of his sword, the buttons on his own jacket – and then on the jackets of the men behind him, and their swords, their axes and shields. 

He finds and identifies three shields around this fire. Two are facing crest-inward, one crest-out, resting against the shrubbery. Erik lets his magic sink into them, smoothing over their shapes, familiarizing himself with their craftmanship, with each notch left by a smith’s hammer and every line etched along the rims. He waits until he knows the heart of the iron, until it pulses through him as thick as his own blood. And then … then, only then, he turns his focus to the environs.

Yes - _yes_ , there, there it is, that hollow thrum through the core of him, something vibrating against the metal shield. _Sound._

The problem now is how to distinguish voices, and words, from all the rest. It proves to be more of a challenge than Erik had anticipated. There are many sounds, for one, echoing off the same shields. The wind in the bushes, the crackle of the fire pit, cloth on skin whenever someone moves, teeth grinding meat. Even after he is able to pick out human speech in particular – a lower rumble, something that penetrates just a bit deeper – he still is not quite able to parse out _words_ when they are so obscured by everything else.

He just needs to focus, Erik tells himself. And so he tries again, this time paying the closest attention to the lower sounds, trying to let all the ambient noise fade away. It improves, but not enough. It still sounds garbled to him, coarse and wholly unintelligible. 

He keeps trying, though, until at last the effort leaves his temples throbbing and his stomach feeling sick and unsettled. Another time, then. Really, it’s a pity they are not still wearing their helms. Curved iron, settled around the head, so close to the mouth –

Erik frowns and uses the tip of his sword to turn over some of the burnt-down coals in his fire pit, trying to coax a few sparks. His soldiers are secure. He does not need metal shields and sound vibrations to tell him that. He knows they will follow him wherever they go – because it is their duty, and their honor – and because Erik is a witch, because he is their commander, because he is Erik the Berserker, whom iron cannot touch.

\--

32.

_July 1099, Jerusalem_

On the morning of the fortieth day, they breached the city walls.

Erik will never forget - forty days, before the city was lost to siege. It was flawlessly and sickeningly symbolic: the storm of Noah which destroyed the world for forty days and forty nights, the forty days Moses spent with G-d, forty years wandering the wilderness, forty days before an unborn child receives its soul. Forty means renewal. Has always meant renewal.

Forty days brought Death upon the holy city.

Erik was fourteen. An age that should have been insignificant. And yet.

They tried to seek shelter in the synagogue, men and women crammed in close - Erik could smell the stench of sweat and piss, the heat of too many bodies in too small a space – a woman’s elbow thrust up beneath his ribs, a man’s boot crushing his toe, his own blood throbbing through his skull and his mother’s fingers trembling as they smoothed his hair over and over again, whispering _shalom_ , her breath warm against his ear. 

There were a thousand people, a thousand Jews, in that synagogue, and the Crusaders set it on fire.

[](http://imgur.com/JOrlSYO)

Erik escaped only because he told the story back to himself over and over again, every night as he fell asleep, curled up hidden in some man’s barn, lodged against the trunk of a tree, obscured in the tangled forest bushes – he forced himself to remember. The rattling sound of people choking for breath. The way his eyes stung in the smoke.

Too much of it is a blur, though, no matter how fiercely he tries to focus. How they found the drain, for example. Small, only just large enough to allow the body of a small child. He doesn’t know who forced the iron grate out of the stone floor. Maybe it was him. But probably not. Because if he could have reached the grate, manipulated it, then why had he not extended his power to the Christians outside and tore their swords from their hands, slit them belly to skull?

He does, however, remember his mother’s hand on his back, pushing him down. Screaming after her – screaming until he was coughing instead, ash painting his lungs black. 

“ _Run,”_ his mother had whispered, stroking his hair back once, thumb brushing the curve of his ear. “Don’t let them catch you – don’t ever stop running. I love you. Go – ” 

He went.

Sometimes he wishes he had stayed. Burned there with them, fingers locked with his mother’s through the latticed iron, linked together until the very end.

But he went. 

Crawling through the sewer, scraping his knees on the ground, trying not to think about the wetness seeping into his clothes. The Romans built these tunnels to carry the city’s waste out past the walls-that-were, past the fields, to the forest. Erik followed them to their end. And when he emerged and looked back at the city, he saw the bodies stacked in heaps outside the gate, alight, pitch black smoke rising up into the morning sky. 

He listened to his mother.

He ran.

He ran through Europe, up to Beiaraland, where he was taken. 

That was when he stopped running, and started chasing. 

\--

31.

After the valravn comes the valkyrie.

At dawn, riding on the cloak of bloodshed.

Erik is always first to rise among his men, to walk the perimeter of their camp, checking the soldiers at their posts and making sure there is nothing in the terrain or environs that went unnoticed at dusk. The world is soft and muted. Their fires have mostly burnt down to smoldering coals, a few wisps of smoke still curling up and dissipating in the open air.

Once he is certain the perimeter is secure, he turns westward, walking out into the field. It looks to have been recently razed, the trees torn down to make room for growing crops and some of the roots still jutting up from the ground, black and twisted. It is mid-autumn; the first frost came overnight, crystallizing on the small green sprouts of winter wheat and crunching beneath Erik’s feet. 

A rustling sound – Erik’s hand goes to his weapon, but it’s nothing. A squirrel, darting among the fallen leaves. He relaxes and moves on, sidestepping a particularly jagged-looking tree stump. 

The men walk the perimeter in pairs. It’s not standard practice among the Nordmenn, but Erik is less interested in catering to his soldiers’ pride than he is in ensuring his men are alive to fight. Only those with power go it alone, and then only if their witchcraft lends them strength against foes, like Erik’s skill with metal or the Wolverine’s ability to heal.

Erik enjoys these opportunities to steal away from the rest of them. He might be their leader, but he is not one of them. He has no role around their campfires or in their arm-in-arm camaraderie. Not that he would wish for it. A strategist needs the distance that comes from indifference, and Erik appreciates his silence.

He is a good way out from the campsite – out of earshot, their tents and fires disappeared behind the rise of a small hill – when he hears it: a loud _screech_ splitting the air, cutting down Erik’s spine like a blade.

He turns toward the sound. It’s a valravn - _the_ valravn? – slicing through the sky, flying low. Flying straight at _Erik._ He reaches back for his sword, his heart pounding – that beak looks sharp enough to rend iron – and it’s moving too fast, Erik’s too late, too _slow_ , too –

He reaches back for his sword, his heart pounding – that beak looks sharp enough to rend iron – and it’s moving too fast, Erik’s too late, too _slow_ , too –

The bird shoots past his shoulder, close enough that he can feel the cut of its wing on his neck, one black feather torn free and caught on the wind –

Another screech and Erik spins around again. The fields are no longer empty.

It feels as if a cold hand has closed round Erik’s throat. He cannot breathe. He cannot _move_. 

The thing in the field is tall, draped in black fabric that hangs perfectly still despite the wind, gleaming like wet feathers in the early dawn. Its face is obscured by a cowl that falls low over a downturned head, its body bone-thin. Erik wants to look away. His eyes _hurt_ , with the desire to close. To block it out. But blindness cannot keep the dark at bay. Seconds drag like hours, and Erik can feel the distance between himself and the figure pulling taut like a wire. The blank expanse of frost and air and dormant wheat. 

Some instinct in Erik tries to meet its eyes, if they are obscured somewhere beneath that hood. To reassure himself – chase away the sudden, gut-wrenching fear that there is _nothing_ there, that if he were to pull back that cowl all he would find is emptiness and a lingering shadow.

Time skitters out. 

The figure lifts its head.

The low-rising sun stretches pale light across the field.

Erik lurches forward, grasping at the handle of his sword, unsheathing it in a single movement. 

Its – its _face_ -

A guttural sound rattles through the air, raw - like a death moan, like the rasp of a man whose throat has been ripped open. The creature has what looks like a dozen eyes, black and glistening as a beetle’s. Its flesh looks to be torn back around the mouth, stripped off the muscle and bone, its maw gaping unnaturally, frozen in an eternal macabre grin. The teeth alone consume almost the entirety of its face - long, curved, sharp - impacted in multiple rows like so many shards of broken glass. 

The creature shifts, shoulders pressing back, and ghastly wings unfold: soot-colored, huge and bat-like, skin stretched thin around hollow bones.

Erik has to force himself to unfreeze, even if his limbs have gone stiff with fear - he yells and runs forward, sword swinging, sprinting full-toward toward an enemy he knows he cannot possibly overcome. The creature makes that groaning sound again and the wings fan wide, teeth bared and white and gleaming –

\- Erik’s blade _thrusts_ out-

But the thing is gone, scattered like blackened leaves into the early morning air. The sword falls through empty air and collides heavy with the dirt.

Erik is not so easily tricked. He whips round a second later, grasping his weapon with both hands, fully expecting the creature to be waiting there for him. Nothing. Erik is gasping, each exhale clouding at his lips, lungs aching as if he had been holding his breath for hours. He feels light-headed, but he forces himself to maintain his ground. Stay alert, be wary. Know your limitations. Know your foe’s limitations, too. Everything has its weakness, its exposed and beating jugular. Erik will find this enemy’s vein and he will sever it. He just needs a little more time.

A crunching noise – like frost underfoot –

Erik jerks to his right, blade ready, but the land is empty. 

It is like that for almost half an hour. Erik stands with his hands white-knuckled around his sword, certain that the field is empty but just as certain that, the moment he drops his guard, the creature will be upon him. But it does not return. It is only once the sun has risen and he sees the smoke of breakfast fires in the distance that Erik dares to sheath his weapon and return to camp, resisting the desire to glance over his shoulder the whole way.

\--

30.

They travel that day, skirting the edge of the forest, moving westward. Erik stays alert, ordering extra men to scout ahead and behind and keeping his own gaze steady. He can’t afford to jump at every shadow - he can’t have his men asking why their leader has become so wary, then discussing it among themselves and inventing fictions that would not be nearly as alarming as the truth.

The truth….

What is the truth?

Erik knows what he saw. He trusts his own eyes, even if others might not. That figure was neither human nor hallucination. He can hear it now, what the Nordmenn might say, with their legends and superstition. A valravn – followed by a figure draped in robes of shadow, with all-seeing eyes. Some legends say the mouth is a lethal pit of blade-sharp teeth; others that it is red with blood. On one thing, however, all the tales agree: to be near enough to see the mouth is to court death.

If Erik told the crew of his vision, those are the legends they would remember – spectral shades and carrion birds that fly on the wings of death. They would say he saw valkyrie.

And then they would demand retreat. Valkyrie – the Nordmenn’s legendary goddesses of war - choosers of the slain. Valkyrie, whose beautiful human forms have destroyed the hearts of a thousand men. On the battlefield, they decide who lives and who dies, choosing the strongest among them to become _einherjar_ , warriors of Valhalla who will fight in the apocalypse.

The Nordmenn say that when a valkyrie reveals itself to a man in its natural form, it is a foretelling of death. That the valkyrie have destined that warrior and his crew to fall in battle. Some claim to see valkyrie and thus choose to retreat, in hopes of sparing their own lives. Others ride forth with shields raised and die honorable men. Sometimes valkyrie take the shape of beautiful women, seducing warriors into a flower-strewn walk to their own death. For other men they act as protection, occult guardians leading armies into battle, valkyrie bearing their bloody standards and bringing glory to the North.

Erik lost his faith, after he left Jerusalem. It faded slowly, diluting like blood in water, until there was nothing left of it. But there are still a great many things he still does not understand. His own magic, for which the Christians would have stoned him. Hel-shadows, creatures of Northern legend – creatures summoned by fear, whose existence Erik denied until he saw them with his own eyes.

Surely he must accept the existence of valkyrie as well. He has seen one. And yet he feels no fear – just a grim sort of anger, and the sense of having been challenged. The valkyrie wants him dead? Fine. But it will have to find a man strong enough to kill him, first.

Erik scans the faces of the warriors closest to him, searching for any signs of paranoia or increased watchfulness. It is possible he is not the only one to whom the valkyrie has shown itself. But nothing seems different. At midday, surrounded by others, his legs aching from traversing unfamiliar terrain, it would be so easy to convince himself it had been a dream and nothing more ….

“You’re brooding so hard I can hear your ass clucking.”

“What?” 

Wolverine falls into step next to him. “I said, ‘What are you thinking about?’”

“Dinner,” Erik says, turning his attention away from the sky and toward his standard-bearer instead. “It’s almost noon. The crew need to rest.”

“I’ll let ‘em know.” 

They settle at the edge of a vast heath, men sitting on their shields and passing around pouches of saltfish and roots. Erik stands apart, leaning against the trunk of a stunted juniper tree, polishing his sword with the end of his tunic, but abandons the task when Wolverine approaches, sliding the blade back into its sheath.

“Not planning to eat, captain?”

“Not hungry.” Erik’s been feeling faintly nauseated ever since dawn.

“More for me, then.” Wolverine pops a sardine into his mouth and crunches away. He drops his shield a second later, rolling his shoulders back in a way that twinges sickly familiar in the pit of Erik’s stomach – but then Wolverine is tucking his saltfish away, leaning against the tree next to Erik with his arms folded across his chest. “How far d’you think we are, right now, from where we found you?” he asks.

Erik looks out across the heath, toward the soft shadows in the distance where the hills begin, and shrugs. “A ways,” he says. “The town we passed yesterday was Regensburg. I lived nowhere near there.”

“This land doesn’t look familiar to you at all?”

“You found me in the north.”

“Ah. That’s right.” Wolverine glances at him sidelong, brows lifted. “It will be awhile before I forget that night. Some pretty impressive stuff, captain.”

“We all have our talents,” Erik says. He lets his gaze briefly drop to Wolverine’s knuckles, and the claws hidden beneath unbroken skin.

“That we do. That, we do.”

Erik knows the Wolverine is not a Nordmann, although he has been allowed to grow a small beard, so not a thrall, either. The beard is honor paid, Erik suspects, in exchange for Wolverine’s loyalty. Or perhaps paid out of respect, when they finally noticed the way they grew old while the Wolverine never did. He carries the king’s standard, after all. Another honor entrusted to him, the man who will never die.

But Erik does not know the Wolverine’s true origins, if not in the North. Wolverine has never said, and Erik has never asked.

Now, though, he wonders. If maybe Wolverine grew up near here, if indeed Wolverine was ever a child at all. It is too easy to imagine him sprouting from the earth fully-formed, or crafted from clay like some _golem._

“We’re about a day’s journey from Ausburch,” Wolverine says. “We’ll follow the Danube south, and then turn with the Lech. Ausburch is well-protected. They have stone walls and a canal surrounding the city.”

“What can we expect?”

“Resistance. They’ll have had time to prepare; on horseback, messengers from Regensburg will have reached them by now, easy. Their first line of defense will be at the outpost. No doubt it will be thoroughly armed.”

“But?”

“But,” Wolverine continues, a small grin cutting across his face, “they rely on metal. And the city gates are wrought iron.”

“They never learn,” Erik says. His own smile is tighter, a bit grim.

“Nope,” Wolverine claps him on the shoulder, once, as he pushes off the tree. “I gotta take a piss. We’ll talk tonight. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” He swings his shield back over his shoulder and lopes off toward the woods, stealing a whole roast potato – speared through with one bony claw – as he passes by the last of the cooking fires.

Erik watches him go. Wolverine has been a constant presence in his life ever since he joined the Nordmenn. He was among the raiders who attacked the village Erik was living in, and he was there when Erik woke, drugged and blurry-eyed on a ship floating through the Bay of Serpents. 

He trained Erik, too, and has accompanied him on all of his missions. Erik does not doubt that Wolverine was assigned to keep an eye on him, to make himself into someone Erik would trust. Erik takes no issue with that. He has learned, over the years, that he _can_ trust Wolverine. And if the Nordmenn feel the need to keep eyes on him, then at least they’re eyes Erik knows.

\--

29.

_November 1115, Swabia, Southern Germany, Holy Roman Empire_

They take the outpost easily.

It’s a bloody, heady thrill, seeing the looks on the knights’ faces when their swords are torn out of their hands by an invisible force. The fear in their eyes when Erik steps out of the wood, both blades drawn, metal singing in his veins. 

He finds the priest they townspeople summoned to the barricades to ward off the witch. Erik takes a special satisfaction in choking him with the iron cross he wears round his neck. The Christians fight more recklessly after that – as if they know they are doomed, the fall of their own magic tearing down their hopes of victory. Those who abandon their posts and flee into the forest are hunted down and slain. Erik does not steal all the defenders’ weapons; the Nordmenn like a fight, after all. 

The sun is high in the sky, almost at midday, when it is finished. The Nordmenn stand in a field of bodies, gazing past the broken citadel toward the city.

Erik leads his men along the river, every one of them on edge and breathless. Even before they are in range, they can see the archers lining the battlements of Ausburch, dark smudges against the sky. 

“Shields up,” Erik calls.

It’s the only order he needs to give. Nordmenn fight in their own way, without the rhyme and predictable reason of the Christian savages. When the archers loose their arrows, the Nordmenn kneel shields held overhead. And then they charge forward, throwing grappling hooks and surging through the wrought iron gates Erik has ripped off their hinges, swinging axes, leaving bodies in their wake. This has always been their strength: their intuition in battle. Their ability ‘to fight without honor,’ as the Sudrmenn say – but the North does not care for the Crusaders’ honor. The North fights for the gods. For valkyrie, and Valhalla. 

Once the gates are gone, the Nordmenn crash into the city, swinging axes and spears and shields. Erik goes for the throat, crushing a man’s windpipe with the weight of his sword and reaching out his power to seize a heavy chain from the drawbridge, using it to hang two knights above the entrance. 

The battle rages for two hours before Erik uses his magic to crush the Crusaders’ weapons in their hands. Their helms … their helms, he melts on their skulls, liquid metal pouring into their mouths and down their throats, clogging their eyes and noses and ears. The city is won without shedding the blood of women and children: a mercy these men did not show to Erik’s people when they razed Jerusalem to the ground, Jews and Muslims alike burning in heaps outside the walls –

Erik’s men raid the storage cellars to replenish their food supplies. The armories, they leave untouched. Nordmenn do not wield Southern steel. 

Some time later, they find the Prince-Bishop of Ausburch and his attendants locked inside the church at the center of the city. The guards are killed just inside the door. They discover the Prince himself kneeling beneath the altar, hoping the cloth would conceal him. 

“ _Bitte_ ,” the Prince pleads. “ _Bitte – verschone mich. Gott wird euch vergeben –“_

There is snot mingling with the spit and tears smeared across his face. His hands are white and plump with the soft skin of an aristocrat, his teeth rotted black.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Erik says.

He thrusts his own blade up into the Prince’s gut, at the join of his ribcage and his sternum, stabbing through the meat of the stomach and up, puncturing a lung. Erik can hear the wheeze of air expelled when he jerks his sword free again, and the Prince chokes, his chest heaving asymmetrically at the inhale. On the exhale, pink foam bubbles at his lips, and his pupils constrict sharply - Erik must have hit the great artery along his spine. Struggling for air, the Prince throws out an arm, as if to grasp for Erik – or for something, anything, that could give him relief. His fingers clutch onto the altar cloth, tugging it onto the floor. Eucharist platters crash to the ground, wine spilling across the floor and sinking into the dirt between the stones. Then, with a strange hissing sound, the Prince hugs the cloth to his chest, limbs twitching.

Erik watches his final moments: the way his skin goes yellowish, and then grey. The bulging jugular veins and the fog that slips over his eyes. 

The Nordmenn take out the rest of the Prince-Bishop’s attendants as the Prince rasps in his final breath, and his pupils blow out one last time, dilating huge and black before his gaze goes to glass.

Erik leans over, wiping the blood from his sword on the altar cloth. The corpse looks small when Erik straightens again - like an old man in death, shriveled and pitiful.

“The city is taken,” Erik says. 

Word travels fast through the streets, and Erik can hear the cheers of the Nordmenn even inside the chapel. Erik knows many of them probably wish the battle had been longer and more challenging, but they have accomplished what matters. Ships of Northern settlers landed on the shores of Beiaraland three days ago. They will arrive in Ausburch soon, to move into their new homes and begin to till farmland that will actually bear harvest, unlike the dying soil of the North. 

“Set up a perimeter around the city,” Erik tells Wolverine. “No one gets out. We’ll house the women and children here in the church, until the settlers arrive. But I don’t want word reaching the other cities that Ausburch has fallen. Not before we know it is secure.” 

“On it, cap’n.”

Erik waits until he is gone before he kneels down on the ground once more. He tugs away the stained altar cloth and the Prince’s hands drop limp against his chest. There it is – the small circle of metal Erik had felt in the Prince’s last moments, like a familiar fire burning on the edges of his awareness. He pulls it off, stretching the ring’s band slightly with his power to get it past the dead man’s bony knuckle. 

He turns the ring’s face toward himself. It is iron, hammered flat on one side. The plate is engraved with the image of a man standing, arms outstretched. A Crusader’s ring.

[ ](http://imgur.com/gDXq6B1)

Erik looks down at the Bishop-Prince’s slackened face and battles down the sudden anger that swells up in his gut. The man is dead. He got what was coming to him. Erik should save his rage for those who have not yet met him.

He slips the ring into his pocket and has the bodies dragged out of the chapel. They burn them outside the walls - it’s fitting, Erik thinks. More smoke rises from the windows of the tallest tower, which the men have claimed as sleeping quarters. Erik occupies the second highest room; the highest, of course, goes to the watchers and the archers, to give them full view of the city and environs, and any approaching trouble.

Erik strips off his swords first as soon as he gets to his tower, pulling the sheath straps over his head with arms that have only just started to shake. Using his power takes far more out of him than he ever lets show. In the midst of battle, with anger heating up his bones, his magic comes easily. And he never thinks about how he will feel afterward - about how much of his energy it might drain.

Swords shed, Erik toes off his boots and relieves himself of his pack, settling down on the small pallet he’s constructed on the floor. There are blankets and furs piled up high enough to be comfortable, and hopefully high enough to keep him warm through the night. He just rests for a moment, tilting his head back against the wall and letting his eyes fall shut. It has been … a long day. A long _week_ \- of marching, and fighting, and scouting. They keep moving south, though, raiding and claiming. The further they go, the more Erik can feel it - like a drug in his veins, the draw of Jerusalem. The sharp smell of spilled blood. 

He wants to march on, to push forward and southward until they reach the Middle Sea. To pirate a fleet of ships on that white shore and sail them into Serkland. To take back what is his – that ground which is holy, the sacred in the profane. To seek vengeance on those who stole it. To pull all of Christendom apart with his power, even if it destroys him in the process.

But he cannot. He would need men – far more men than he has on hand – and far more men of power. The best he can do is to draw the line of the Northern invasion farther inland, to be grateful for each league they can declare as Northern territory, in the hope that one day they might push just far enough. Might see the whole of the North standing on that shore and gazing out across the waters toward a new and unconquered land. 

The Nordmenn are not Erik’s people, but they have a common enemy. For now, that is enough.

A few moments pass and Erik opens his eyes again, sitting up to reach for his pack. From the front flap he pulls out a bone needle and thread; it takes several tries for him to finally guide the thread through the tiny hole. He is not as young as he used to be, he supposes. And battle makes the eyes grow weary. 

Erik draws one of his sheathed swords into his lap, unbuckling the clasp that binds it to its mate, setting the second blade aside for now. He can feel the Prince-Bishop’s ring in his pocket. The Crusader’s ring. Burning a hole into his skin.

He pulls it out. It’s larger than many of the others he has collected. Of course it would be; it belonged to a Prince, not some common knight. He runs the pad of his thumb over the engraved face. It’s tempting, as it always is, to use his power to rub the engraving away. To blot out the Crusaders’ mark. But he leaves it as it is; he wants it to be recognizable. He takes his trophies as they come.

The leather straps criss-crossing Erik’s canvas scabbard are covered with the badges of the dead. All metal: rings, small cross-shaped charms, a crucifix here and there. All sewn onto the leather, one for every Crusader that Erik has killed. 

He stitches the iron ring into place, looping thread around and around, knotting it tight. Two hundred and twelve trophies – and he can feel every single one of them, tiny glowing stars in the landscape of his awareness. He remembers when he earned them, and how: the knight who burned an orphanage of Jewish children, the Prince who ordered the execution of every witch in his city, the man who killed his child when the boy sprouted wings.

Outside, someone shouts.

Erik pushes the scabbard aside and rises quickly from his pallet, crossing to the narrow window to gaze down into the torch-lit courtyard below. A knot of shadowy figures is gathered just outside the lower level door. One of them raises an arm and pounds on the frame. Gold light glints off the curved blade of the axe strapped to his back - they’re Nordmenn.

Erik summons a bronze knife from his pack, pulling on his boots and tucking the blade in against his calf. He heads down, taking the stairs quickly, turning the bottom curve and stepping out into the entrance hall just as the guards are pulling open the door. 

It’s Geitir, Arnvid, and Hrodny the Fair, the last with one burly arm wrapped around the waist of a fourth man. Erik pauses mid step – though the hesitation is brief, a fraction of a second, before he takes in a small steadying breath and clasps his hands behind his back, examining the prisoner they’ve brought with them.

He is a young man: twenty or twenty-one years old, by Erik’s estimate. A Southerner, judging by the darkness of his hair, though his eyes are the color of seawater and his skin is pale, throat shifting against the blade of Hrodny’s knife as he swallows. He is … he’s pleasing to look at, Erik thinks as diplomatically as possible. Erik does not think he has ever seen eyes so bright. 

The man - _boy_ \- meets his gaze and suddenly Erik feels as if he is the one who is trapped, his heart pounding in his chest and his blood gone hot beneath his skin.

[](http://imgur.com/eWJ6clU)

“Who is this?” Erik says, once he has his voice back.

“We found him out near the perimeter,” Geitir says. “We think he was trying to escape, to bring word to the other towns. To seek help, or to warn them.”

Erik looks back to the boy, who looks remarkably calm considering he is surrounded by Nordmenn and there is a knife at his throat. “What is your name?” he asks in Schwäbisch; if the boy is indeed from Ausburch, he should know the language.

The boy does not reply. Not verbally, at least. But Erik hears the voice inside his head as clearly as if it were spoken out loud. 

_< <My name is Charles.>>_

Erik reels back – and it feels abruptly as if the forces of the earth have remagnetized to converge on the boy, his thoughts searing out to white. He’s a witch. The boy is a witch. 

A witch, with a power Erik has never seen before. And he thinks he can understand it, how some might look at magic such as this and truly find it evil. Why some might have cause to fear a voice which speaks in their minds – or how it could be used to trick a man, to drive him mad.

Erik recovers quickly, releasing his hands from behind his back and taking half a step closer. The boy’s eyes follow him steadily – but without the flicker of fear, even though surely he knows Erik could have him dead in an instant, if he wanted …. 

“Where are you from?”

 _< <I wander. Here and there. Most recently, from Franconia.>>_

Erik wants to demand to know the extent of the boy’s power. He wants to test its limits – to see if the boy can hear words that go unspoken, for example. But not here. Not surrounded by Nordmenn whose appreciation of Erik’s power only lasts insofar as he remains their ally. Not when Erik does not trust his own expression to remain impassive.

The boy still has not spoken aloud. The realization is strangely belated; it feels as if Erik had temporarily forgotten anyone else was even present. The rest of the world feels bloated around him – unreal, like he could reach out and grasp the fabric of the universe with his fingers and tear it open, step out onto some new earth … one which seems so much sharper, so much more vivid than his own.

“Will you speak?” Erik demands.

The smallest of smiles creases the boy’s lips and he shakes his head, once.

“Very well.” Erik nods toward Hrodny the Fair. “Take him up to my tower and watch him. I will be there shortly.” 

Hrodny grunts his agreement and drags the boy away. Erik turns his attention back to the remaining guards.

“Who is at your stations, if you are here?”

“We sent Sigvid and Hoggard out to cover for us while we brought the boy back here,” Arnvid says. 

“Good. Now go and relieve them.”

Arnvid and Geitir nod, almost in unison, and leave. A burst of cold air gusts in through the open doorway as they go, sending a shiver down Erik’s spine. He is suddenly struck with the sense that he has been here before – as if he is living in some kind of loop, experiencing the same moment over and over again.

The feeling passes. Erik stares out into the dark courtyard, the torchlight flickering on the cobblestones, men shouting in the distance. And then the door falls shut. 

Erik heads up the stairs. Somehow they seem even darker than they had just a few short minutes before; a cloud has passed over the moon, perhaps, or the torches on the landing have gone out. He trails his fingers along the stone wall and treads carefully, wary of the uneven heights of each step. 

He was right about the landing. All the fires have blown out – wind from the arrow loop, most likely. He crosses toward his chamber door in the dark and pushes it open. 

The torches are still lit inside, and the boy is sitting on the edge of Erik’s makeshift bed, his legs tucked up under him and his hands clasped in his lap. The firelight makes his skin glow golden, even as it casts his eyes into shadow.

“You can leave,” Erik says, glancing toward Hrodny the Fair. A moment later, he adds: “The torches went out on the landing. Make sure they are relit.” 

He waits until he hears Hrodny’s footsteps descending the stairs before he looks back to the boy, who has not moved a hair in the entire time Erik’s been here. He is just watching Erik with a steady gaze, silent. Not even so much as a whisper of a voice in the back of Erik’s mind.

 _Are you planning to speak, now?_ Erik thinks it as loudly as he can, wondering if the boy will be able to pick it up, or if the signal only runs one way.

The boy tilts his head to the side slightly and the light throws his cheekbone into sharp relief, turning his features far more angular than is natural. _< <That depends - do you want me to speak? Or do you prefer me silent and submitting?>>_

Erik very pointedly does not think about all the ways he might like the boy to submit, spread bare on those furs. 

“Talk,” he says. As fascinating as he might find the boy’s magic, he knows the risk it poses, letting himself become too enthralled by it. This boy is still a prisoner, no matter how fair his face. 

“All right.” 

The boy’s voice is a light tenor, smooth and unbroken. He has no accent that Erik can detect. Even his Schwäbisch has the clear vowels and crisp consonants of educated fluency: the kind that can only be obtained through learning a language as a scholar rather than a native, the precision and perfection of a familiar – but second – tongue. 

“I have a name, you know,” the boy says. “Charles. I told you, remember? There’s no need to think of me as ‘boy.’” 

“Fine. Charles, then. Tell me what you were doing wandering outside the city walls.” 

“Does it matter what I say? You will invent a reason that makes sense to you. The truth has nothing to do with it.” 

Erik’s brows go shooting up. Never in his life has he encountered such cheek in someone so young. The boy – Charles – seems completely unfazed by it, as if he has done nothing more astonishing than comment on the color of the sky.

“You will answer the question,” Erik says, “or I will have you hanged in the bailey as a warning to the others.”

Charles laughs. “No, you won’t.” He unfolds his legs and stands, crossing over to the oriel window and gazing across the grounds for a few seconds, out past the farthest walls and to the forest. Then he turns back toward Erik and folds his arms over his chest. “You are intrigued by me. You won’t kill me before you’ve had a chance to figure me out.”

Erik’s knife is in his hand before he is even aware he’s drawing it. And that - _that_ catches Charles’s attention, the way the metal bends to Erik’s will, drawn out of its sheath and to his grasp without Erik having lifting so much as a finger. Charles’s lips part, just slightly, and his gaze is slow in lifting back to Erik’s face.

“Fascinating,” he says.

It really is remarkable, Erik thinks – only somewhat resentfully – how utterly unperturbed Charles seems by it all. 

No. Not remarkable. _Alarming._

Erik can think of precisely two kinds of people who show such little fear in the face of death: soldiers, and spies. It is rather obvious that Charles is not one of the former.

But no matter. Erik is versed enough in espionage. He keeps Wolverine alive, after all. 

The difference is, of course, that he knows whom Wolverine reports to. If he’s right about Charles – and there’s no way to know for sure, not yet – then who is pulling Charles’s strings? No doubt a Crusader king somewhere –

Charles is looking at him with a crooked sort of half-smile on his face, and Erik belatedly realizes Charles must have caught every bit of that. 

“You’re welcome to just _tell_ me,” Erik says. “It would save us both a lot of effort.”

“What if I said I’m not working for anyone? - See? Already, you don’t believe me. Like I said, you will invent your own answers. Perhaps my job is simply to sit quietly until you do.”

“Stay out of my head.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Charles lifts one perfect brow, but he doesn’t push the issue. He just steps forward – and he moves unlike anything Erik has ever seen, with a kind of _intent_ that is rare even among soldiers, no sense of hesitation or discomfort in his own body, no shame over the way his hips almost sway – something any other man might have tried to train himself out of by adulthood. It captures Erik’s exclusive attention, his gaze fixed on the shift of fabric against Charles’s legs, drawn taut then falling loose again with each step, how the cloth folds at the join of his thigh with his hip and clings in a way that Erik finds entirely indecent.

Erik’s heart pounds. He should slit Charles’s throat. He should bury his blade in Charles’s stomach, for daring to draw so close. He wants to retaliate, to give Charles a reason to back away quickly, to make sure Charles never dares forget who has the power here. He shouldn’t trust this boy, with his sea-bright eyes and his ability to draw Erik’s thoughts out of his mind like loose threads from a tapestry. 

But he does none of those things. He lets Charles’s fingers slide along the flat side of his bronze knife. Charles’s hands are soft and supple; he has never held a plowshare, or lifted an ax. His fingers are sturdy, though, his palms square and practical. His nails are round and very, very clean.

“Can you feel this?” Charles asks, holding Erik’s gaze as his thumb glides toward the hilt.

Erik can. He feels Charles’s touch on the blade as keenly as if Charles caressed his own flesh. He is captivated by it.

He nods.

“The way I sense your mind is much the same. I cannot stop feeling it just because you ask me to. I won’t intentionally focus on your thoughts, though … if that’s what you really want.”

Somehow - _some_ how – Charles manages to sound like he doubts it.

Charles drops his hand before Erik can move to pull his knife away. Erik resents that. 

“So,” Charles says, clasping his hands behind his back and standing at ease, his head tilted slightly to the left. “Now that you have me, what do you plan to do with me? I told you I am no spy, but you do not believe it. Will you attempt to torture me into a confession?”

“Maybe.” Even to Erik’s own ears, it sounds petulant. He ought to – but at the moment, it feels like it would be motivated more by a desire to salve his pride than by any true worthy intention.

Charles’s mouth tilts upward. “I look forward to it.”

Erik cannot remember being so rattled by a prisoner before, not in all his years of service. It must be an act. Cleverly done. Charles wears it well, Erik will give him that. He plays at indifference far better than even the coldest Nordmann, but Erik sees through him. The game is transparent.

“You will stay here tonight,” Erik says, making the decision in a fraction of a second. He will not risk leaving the boy with the other men, where he might invade their minds – and where the warriors will not, after two months away from the warmth of their wives’ furs, violate Charles’s body. “In a few days, we leave the city. If you have not confessed by then, you will march with us – wherever we may go.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The massacre of the Regensburg Jews that Erik references occurred in 1096, when passing Crusaders tried to force all the Jews in the city to convert to Christianity, to the point of dragging them to the Danube and forcing them to accept baptism in the river. Those who refused were murdered.
> 
> The Siege of Jerusalem happened as Erik describes. Most of the Jewish inhabitants tried to seek safety in the synagogue, but all were burned alive there by the Crusaders. The dead bodies of the slain Muslims and Jews were piled in pyramids outside the city walls and cremated.
> 
> Ausburch is the ancient name for the present-day city of Augsburg, Germany.
> 
> Many Crusaders wore rings such as Erik describes the Prince-Bishop as having on his person. A picture of such an artifact can be found [here.](http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/writing/medieval/rings/crusader3.jpg)


	2. Chapter 2

PART TWO

How is it, ye ravens -  
whence are ye come now  
with beaks all gory,  
at break of morning?  
Carrion-reek ye carry,  
and your claws are bloody.  
Were ye near, at night-time,  
where ye knew of corpses?

\- Hrafnsmál

\--

28.

_November 1115, Swabia, Southern Germany, Holy Roman Empire_

Erik wakes just before dawn.

He always does – regardless of how late he may have gone to sleep the night before, regardless of whatever battles may have been fought. Ever since he left Jerusalem, it has been this way, as if there is some tether that always yanks him abruptly up, his heart racing and his breath coming fast and shallow, some inexplicable terror searing through his veins, always now – always that darkest hour – always while the rest of the world still slumbers and Erik … sometimes Erik can believe it, that he might be the only living thing left on earth.

Today, though … today, when he wakes, he is not alone. 

The boy is sitting across the room, leaning against the wall with his legs neatly crossed, apparently oblivious to the chain Erik had welded into a loop around his ankle. He is watching Erik; it’s dark, but Erik can see the moonlight reflecting off the whites of his eyes.

[ ](http://imgur.com/KdUeSyb)

He waits a moment, refusing to speak before he has caught his breath. And then: “Did you not sleep?”

Charles shrugs one shoulder. “Would you sleep, if you were chained to the floor?”

Erik doesn’t have to imagine - he knows the answer already. He suspects Charles does, as well – information gleaned from the shadowy corners of Erik’s mind. “Do you need something? Wine? Cider?” He’s not _inhumane_ , after all. 

“Wine, thank you.”

Erik pulls himself out of bed and straps on his boots. He takes his knife with him when he goes downstairs, out of habit as much as anything else. He pours Charles a cup of wine from the carafe his men have raided from one of the noble houses in the area – and, after a second thought, one for himself as well. 

Charles is sitting same as Erik left him when he returns; he hasn't bothered trying to stand, or even to uncross his legs to get more comfortable. Erik hands him his cup and Charles allows him a smile in thanks.

“Your magic,” Erik says –– as he settles down on the floor across from Charles, putting his wine on the flattest stone. He sees no reason not to skip directly to the point “What is the extent of it?”

“The extent?” Charles looks almost amused.

“Its limits.”

At that, Charles laughs. “There are none.”

Erik finds himself, in that moment, acutely aware of every piece of metal in the entire room: all the charms stitched onto his scabbards, the swords themselves, his knife, the fastenings on Charles’s trousers, the iron torch-grates nailed into the mortar of the walls. 

“Don’t worry,” Charles says – and he actually leans forward, one pale hand curling round Erik’s ankle, “I promised you, I won’t read your mind unless you ask. I keep my word.”

“You said you wouldn’t _read_ my mind. But you could – you could still – “

“Control it? I could, but for what purpose?”

“To escape.”

“Erik, if I wanted to escape, I would not need to twist your mind to do it.” Charles swirls his wine round in his cup, once, before taking a sip. “I try not to influence people in that way if I can help it.”

“And why not? Surely not based on moral principle.”

Charles lifts one shoulder, shrugging. “It doesn’t appeal to me, is all. And – forgive me – but from what I’ve seen, you have a lovely mind. I would hate to smudge it with my own fingerprints.”

“For aesthetic reasons, then.”

“You’re prevaricating.” Charles releases Erik’s ankle, and Erik finds he misses the contact almost as soon as it’s lost. “The point is that I am not going to read your mind, or alter it, or force your actions, although I am capable of all of those things. Whether you choose to believe me is up to you.”

Erik considers it as he drinks his wine, running his metal-sense along his nearest sword, tracing up toward the hilt, taking a moment to sharpen one place where the blade has grown dull. One thing is obvious: whether Charles is telling the truth or not, Erik has no way to tell. Charles could slip into his mind without a trace and scrub it clean completely clean; of that, Erik has no doubt. 

Perhaps Erik _should_ kill him. But despite Charles’s insistence to the contrary, he suspects Charles would not hesitate to break his word if it meant preserving his own life. A minor alteration is all it would take – a whisper at the fringes of his thoughts, a doubt here, a small twinge of guilt. He may have done so already. Erik’s thoughts in this very moment could be products of Charles’s design. 

So, he cannot trust him. But he cannot kill him, either. Erik doesn’t like the idea: a prisoner he cannot threaten, that he cannot control. Particularly one such as Charles, who has targeted Erik’s weaknesses so perfectly already, just by being what he is. A witch. And a beautiful one, no less. 

“Well,” Erik says at last, because there is nothing else to say, “I suppose we’ll find out eventually, won’t we?”

Charles laughs and settles back against the wall, taking another long, languid sip of his drink. “Yes,” he says, “I suppose we will.”

Silence, for a moment, and then Erik says, “Let me ask you this: if you could influence the minds of anyone around you, why did you allow yourself to be captured by my men?”

“You say that as if it is absurd, the idea that I might _want_ to be captured by you.”

Erik blinks. “What?”

“I said, what if I wanted you to find me? Would that answer your question?”

“Yes. It would tell me that you are a spy.”

“I am not a spy.” Charles says it with all the patience of an old man speaking to a rash young novice. Erik can’t help but find the tone grating. 

“What are you, then?”

Charles shakes his head. He’s frowning now, however slightly. “You know, I don’t think I want to tell you yet.”

Erik snorts. “And why not?”

“You’re not ready. The time isn’t right. The stars are not in alignment. Whatever excuse is in vogue these days; I’m afraid I’m rather behind on the trends.”

“And can you predict, sage, when the time _will_ be right?”

Charles appears to be completely oblivious to the notion of sarcasm. “Soon, I think. But not now.” He finishes off his wine, the cup making a hollow sound as he sets it back down on the stone. “For the time being, perhaps we ought to simply get to know each other. Yes?” A pause, and then – “Well, for you to get to know me. I know you, already.”

Erik looks at him, at this small flush-cheeked boy with his small stature and his general insouciance, as comfortable in chains as he might be in his own bed. “What do you know about me?”

For a moment, Charles’s face is unreadable, and then a tiny smile curves up the corners of his lips. 

“Everything.”

\--

27.

Erik marks the days that pass, scratching lines into the wall with his knife, one for every sundown. He anticipates it will take over a week for the settlers to travel down through Danmark, into Slesvik and then Beiaraland. That is if they are not attacked. They may well be; the Christians are surely eager to avenge their burned and raided cities. The settlers are not merely women and children, though. Erik trusts they will survive.

Charles watches him make his calendar, brushing away the stone dust afterward with his pale hand, tracing each groove. Erik wonders if this is a sign – if captivity is finally starting to seep down into Charles’s bones, if that chain feels heavier now that he’s spent a few nights locked to it. 

The boy never seems to sleep. Erik has woken a few times in the night to find him still sitting in his corner, cross-legged, watching. Always watching, his eyes like tiny lights in the dark, always fixed on Erik, never on anything else. Erik considers having Charles removed to the stables after all, but decides against it in the end. He is not so lily-livered as that. And he refuses to allow Charles to steal his rest; Erik sleeps just to spite him, lying on his side to face him. Erik is a Jew. He has seen his share of horrors. No child, not even a witch, can unsettle him this easily.

He asked Charles about it, once. After the third night, when the curiosity grows too much to bear.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

Charles had only looked confused, chewing on his lower lip for a moment before he asked: “Would you prefer me to?”

Erik decided the question was too foolish to deserve an answer.

During the day, Erik walks along the battlement and keeps his ear turned to the conversations among his crew, in the way that had become habit around a dinner fire and is more difficult, now, with walls and wind between them. The Wolverine oversees them more directly, but the only stories he reports to Erik are those of drunken tomfoolery and Christian women who spread their legs too willingly. 

“To be quite honest with you,” Wolverine tells him on day four, “I find your Svavian boy to be a much bigger problem. You still haven’t been able to get him to talk?”

“He talks quite a bit. Just never about anything of substance.”

“Right.” Wolverine spits out over the wall. “But he’s a witch, you said. Can talk inside your head, yeah?”

Erik nods. He hasn’t told Wolverine the rest of it. He doesn’t trust the man not to give in to impulse and get himself killed – or worse. 

“See, that worries me, that right there. He’s a mind-witch, and you clam up every time we talk about it. Makes me wonder if maybe there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

“I don’t know what you expect from me, Wolverine. I’ve told you everything I know.”

Wolverine just grunts and shakes his head. “You can’t lie for shit, boy. Maybe you could fool some of these fresh-faced lads, but me? I’ve been around too long. I see right through you, Ma– ”

“That’s enough,” Erik snaps.

“What? Don’t like the sound of your own name? I have to say, you’re the last one I’d have expected. A thrall for only twelve years, but here you are, gone native on me.” 

Erik grits his teeth, hard enough that his jaw hurts. “It’s not that,” he says. “It’s just easier this way.”

“Easier to do what? To excuse it to yourself, the fact that you’re letting the North use you, when you have the power to destroy every last man in this crew?”

“The North is not _using_ me,” Erik all but growls out. “I may be a thrall in name, but I chose this of my own will. The North and I have a common enemy.”

“ _Chose_ \- you didn’t choose anything. Did you choose it, when the Nordmenn burned down the village where you’d settled? Did you choose it, when they poisoned you with henbane so you couldn’t fight back? Months of delirium where you didn’t remember your fucking name, couldn’t touch your own power.” Wolverine stops halfway toward the east tower, turning round to face Erik square-on. “They broke you. They broke you like an animal, and now you’ve let yourself become complacent. You let them _tame_ you.”

“I said that’s _enough_!”

Wolverine falls silent, if only Erik has torn his ax from his back, leather strap hanging limp and useless off Wolverine’s shoulder, the weapon hovering in the air along with the metal clasps from Wolverine’s jacket, Erik’s own knife, and three nails ripped from the wood of the nearest trapdoor. Erik can feel the world itself humming in the marrow of his bones, the taste of copper hot in his mouth.

Slowly, Erik forces his breathing to calm. His heart is still racing even as he lets the metal drift back down to earth, catching his knife by the handle as it goes.

“Feel better now?” Wolverine says, once the worst of Erik’s rage seems to have passed.

“You should learn to hold your tongue,” Erik says, using his magic to push Wolverine’s ax a bit too forcefully across the stone, hitting the toes of his shoes. Wolverine has to bend over to pick it up, and even then he has no way of fitting it back into its strap; the leather was all but shredded by the blade when Erik yanked it free.

“You owe me a new one of these,” Wolverine mutters, flicking the broken strap. 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Wolverine grunts and turns, leading the way toward the tower. He pauses at the top of the stairs and looks back to Erik. For a second, he almost seems to hesitate, but then:

“Take my advice, Erik. Be careful around that boy of yours. Something’s not right about him. I can’t put my finger on it, but he’s ….” Wolverine breaks off, frowning.

“Evil?” Erik suggests, more than half sarcastic.

“I wasn’t going to say ‘evil.’” Wolverine shakes his head and taps the handle of his ax twice against the ground. “’Dangerous,’ though ….” 

A wind from the south blows through the turret, catching in Wolverine’s hair and pulling a tangled strand briefly over his mouth. Wolverine brushes it away, but his frown has only deepened. 

“I’ve said too much.” Wolverine hitches his ax up over his shoulder, glancing briefly toward the sun, already fallen halfway down toward the horizon. “Just – be careful.” 

Erik watches him descend the ladder off the wall walk, disappearing into the tower. He hadn’t realized the Wolverine was superstitious; most Nordmenn were, but since Wolverine was not from the North, he had simply assumed…. But just then, when the wind blew his hair over his mouth, Wolverine had taken that as an omen. Some unseen force urging him into silence.

Despite that unexpected eccentricity, though, Wolverine was right. He is not aware of the danger that Charles poses, but Erik cannot afford ignorance. 

And Charles is a threat in more ways than one. Erik does not trust the way his own gaze lingers on Charles’s body, or the images he cannot get out of his mind every time Charles accidentally reveals a bit of wrist. Even the back of his neck – that small bone, the knob at the top of his spine which protrudes when Charles tilts his head forward, where Erik wants nothing more than to press his lips. 

Perhaps if that were the extent of it, some quiet desire to chastely kiss Charles’s skin, Erik might not find it so concerning. But that is not the only thing that Erik wants. 

Erik has always been aware of his inclinations. They do not cause him any moral disturbance. If he had spent the past decade among his own people, maybe he would have learned to resent his body’s urges, but the Nordmenn don’t care who you fuck as long as you have a good woman in your bed at night, birthing your children. They have even less concern for the lust of thralls, whose children will be slaves and shepherds, but will never bear arms or sail into battle. 

Erik could take Charles, if he wanted. The boy is his to use as he will. 

Even so – perhaps some desires are best left unsatisfied.

That night, when Erik returns, Charles is waiting in the tower – though this time, he is not sitting precisely as Erik had left him. He has a book held between both hands, open perhaps a third of the way through. Reading.

“What is that?” Erik asks. There is no need to specify what he’s referring to.

“A book,” Charles says, lifting it up for Erik to see. It is bound in black goatskin, the leather engraved with a hundred tiny designs too delicate for Erik’s weak eyes to make out at this distance. “Nothing interesting, I’m afraid. I had hoped for a compilation of saga or legends, but it’s an account of the Prince-Bishop’s hygiene rituals. Hardly riveting material.”

“I didn’t know you could read.”

Charles nods. “While I am no scholar, I’ve had time to learn. I find the practice calming.”

“ _When?_ ” Erik knows no peasant boy with the time for anything at all, once his daily chores are done. Of course, he reminds himself, he has no reason to believe Charles is a peasant at all. His hands are soft, his skin too fair. For all Erik knows, Charles is runaway royalty, fleeing a brutal father or an even more brutal wife.

But Charles just laughs and shakes his head, turning his gaze back down to the book.

“You are being intentionally obtuse,” Erik states, failing to mask his irritation.

“Your sense of entitlement is no better,” Charles says, licking his thumb to turn the page.

Erik is tempted to stride across the room and tear the damn book out of his hands. “If you insist upon affecting this aura of enigma, then I will be forced to continue to ask questions. If you wish me to stop, the option is yours.”

Charles lets out a soft breath, almost like a sigh, and closes the book at last, setting it aside on the stone floor. “Erik, we have discussed this exhaustively already,” he says. “Must we really continue?”

“Until you relent, yes.” Erik very pointedly ignores Charles’s use of his first name.

“Well,” Charles says, “you’re persistent, at any rate.” If Erik didn’t know better, he’d think Charles sounded almost pleased.

Erik sits down on his makeshift bed and sets to the task of unstrapping his boots at the ankles. Charles watches in silence for a while, his constant gaze no less unnerving even after four days of exposure.

And then, once Erik has finally convinced himself that Charles has chosen silence, Charles says, “Can you read?”

Erik pushes his boots aside and looks up. At some point, the laces of Charles’s tunic have come undone, exposing the skin of his sternum. Erik can see the elegant line of one collarbone – and he imagines what is concealed beneath the rest of that tunic, unseen and untouched – except perhaps by Charles himself, when he is alone and wanting, guilty – but no, no, Charles would never feel guilt, not over something like this – _confident_ hands slipping down his stomach, past his hips, Charles’s head tilting back and his eyes fluttering shut as his fingers curl round –

“What?” Erik has forgotten what Charles asked.

Charles’s expression is completely blank. At least he has kept his promise so far, and stayed out of Erik’s thoughts. “I asked if you knew how to read.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Where would I have learned to read?”

“You could have taught yourself,” Charles says, as though it is a natural assumption.

“Why would I? I have no reason to learn. There is no task in my life that requires the ability to pick words off a page.”

“Reading can be pleasurable in its own right,” Charles says. “Perhaps not _this_ reading,” he taps the cover of the Prince-Bishop’s book, “but legends, and histories, and Greek poetry? I imagine life would be rather dull and thoughtless without that.”

“Then I am dull and thoughtless,” Erik all but snaps. “You’ve made me. You have discovered my secret.”

Charles sighs. “You’re twisting my words. Are you always this incorrigible?”

“Sometimes I’m worse.”

At that, Charles grins, shaking his head as he settles back against the wall once more. Erik resents the easy languor of his posture, one leg bent and the other extended across the floor, his eyes closed as if halfway to a dream. But Erik knows better than to think he’s really asleep. 

The chain around Charles’s ankle is starting to rub his skin raw; Erik sees it now, Charles’s trouser leg rucked up a bit from his position, exposing the curve of his lower calf. It’s not as bad as Erik had expected. A slight roughening of the skin beneath the metal – but no blistering, no blood. It’s only pink. 

It might be petty and resentful, but Erik uses his magic to tighten the cuff until it’s flush against Charles’s skin, squeezing tight enough to bruise. Charles opens his eyes, gaze finding Erik’s across the room, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. Just smiles, the sort of smile a grown man might give a flighty child. 

Erik goes to bed with anger still pulling a knot in his gut, hot and throbbing beneath his breastbone, teeth gritted. When he wakes the next morning, his jaw hurts, and the anger has not abated.

\--

26.

On the fifth day, Erik receives word from his scouts that the settlers are within twenty-four hours’ journey of Ausburch, and they begin preparations to leave. 

“Orders from the North,” the scout tells him, with the slightly-wavering tone that Erik has come to expect from novices who are terrified of Erik the Berserker, but still want to assert their superiority over Erik the Thrall. “We are to move north, toward Bohemia. Raid Plzeň castle and continue northeast toward Prague, but do not take the city; it is too well-defended.”

Erik’s pulse stumbles for a moment – one glorious, reeling moment when he thought the orders might be to attack Prague and purge it of Crusaders. Erik has heard of the atrocities there, the Jews locked inside of ghettos and starving to death while the good Christian men and women of the city stand by and do nothing. 

But no. Their orders are to take the surrounding cities but leave that den of evil untouched. 

Erik forces his anger down, locking it away, even if only temporarily. Save it for battle. There are hundreds of Crusaders in other towns and castle, men who have committed crimes just as terrible and often worse. Let them pay for the crimes of all their brethren.

“…and smoke rising in the west,” the scout is saying as Erik finally forces his attention back. “Too small to be anything but a campfire; probably some hunters who stayed in the forest past dark and had to spend the night there. We’ve sent a small contingent to confirm, just in case.”

“Good,” Erik says. “Is that all?”

The scout nods.

“Then go down to the bailey and find the Wolverine. Tell him I put you in charge of packing the horses. He will give you further instruction there.”

It’s growing colder, a northern wind rattling through the battlements and catching the flag of their standard, strong enough that Erik worries the fabric might tear. 

He returns to his tower to pull a foxfur around his shoulders. Charles is still on the floor, lying back this time with his knees bent and the book propped against his thighs. He spares Erik a brief glance, but that’s all the acknowledgment he affords him before returning to his reading.

Before leaving, Erik has Arnvid bring up the Prince-Bishop’s fine copper tub from the dead man’s residence and fill it with hot water. Charles might still be a prisoner, but Erik will be damned if he’s going to keep the boy in his own tent once he starts to smell. Erik unclasps the chain from around Charles’s ankle and gives him a rough cloth and soap. He doesn’t warn Charles not to try to escape; melting the latch on the door, he thinks, conveys the message clearly enough.

Of course, then he is partially distracted for the next hour as he goes about his business, imagining Charles’s naked form, Charles’s hands rubbing the soap suds down his own pale thighs. 

The women and children still imprisoned in the keep are to become thralls. Erik informs them of this, personally. He expects to be faced with anger, resentment, grief, and possibly even violence – but instead, he is met with relief. They must have thought he came to bring them an even worse fate. 

Erik is not so sure death _is_ a worse fate, for them. The women will be raped, and will carry Northern babies, who will also be thralls. The children will be forced to grow up far too fast, their fathers already slain before their eyes. 

Erik does not pity them. They are the wives and spawn of Crusaders, and if left free, they would give birth to – would become – Crusaders themselves, fueled by a thirst for vengeance. Short of killing them outright, this is the only solution.

After he is done there, he passes by the men organizing the trophies that have been raided: provisions the crew will take on the road, the supplies they will leave for the settlers, and treasure to send back to the Northern crown. The Southern weapons will be melted down and used for scrap.

Erik waits until the sun is lower in the sky before he returns to the tower. Charles should be finished now, and it is his last opportunity to give Erik his confession before they leave. And Erik intends to keep his promise; if Charles will not speak, then Erik will drag him down the Svavian roads with all the rest of the crew. If Charles’s life has been as sheltered as Erik suspects, the journey will not be easy on him. After a few days of rough roads and frozen nights, a few meals of saltfish and dried-out bread, Charles will break. 

He uses his power on the tower door, welding the lock back into usable form. The metal bends easily to his will and, as always, it is just a little bit difficult to let go – Erik lingers there a second too long, all his senses pressed up against the warm familiarity of iron, before he pushes the door inward.

And –

In the center of the room: the Prince-Bishop’s tub, filled to the brim with water, steam somehow still rising up into the air and Charles, sitting within, his head resting back against the lip of the tub and his cheeks flushed with the heat. All Erik can see of him is his forearm, draped over the side, his bared throat and his knees rising up out of the water – but it’s enough. Erik’s imagination fills in the rest, and he’s already half-hard, his cock pressing out against the seam of his trousers, _wanting._

Charles opens his eyes and shifts in the tub to look at Erik, a bit of the excess water slipping over the sides and splashing onto the stone. “Erik,” he says. “You’re back.”

Not _you’re back early,_ not _already,_ not _unexpectedly._

Erik is still standing in the doorway, trapped in his own shock, as Charles rises out of the tub. He’s dripping, there’s water puddling on the floor beneath his feet as he steps onto the stone. Erik barely even notices; he cannot tear his eyes from Charles’s wet skin, from one of the fat droplets that cuts diagonally across Charles’s abdomen, hovering for a split second at his navel before it falls down, down, down, slithering past the sharp rise of his hipbone and catching – at last – in the short brown curls between Charles’s legs.

And there it is: Charles’s cock, soft and uncut, swinging slightly as Charles moves forward. 

“My apologies,” Charles says, coming to a stop just a few feet from Erik, his hands relaxed at his sides – not trying to cover himself, not reaching for a cloth. “I don’t believe you left a towel.”

Erik’s gaze snaps up to Charles’s face. And although Charles must know exactly what Erik’s thinking – g-d, but he’s hardly been subtle about it – he looks completely undisturbed, the smile on his mouth nothing but polite, betraying neither smugness nor shame. A few dark locks of Charles’s hair are clinging to his brow and cheeks, dripping down his neck and pooling in the hollow of his throat.

Erik can’t untangle it, what of the heat that grips his gut is anger and what is arousal. He’s not so sure they are all that different, in the end. He hates Charles, with the kind of passion usually reserved for lovers – because he will not relent, because he is a threat Erik cannot afford to neutralize, because he bares himself to Erik as if he knows what Erik wants and knows just as certainly that Erik dares not take it.

Well, Erik thinks - and even his thoughts have a vicious edge to them, drawn taut and trembling and ready to snap - that’s where Charles is wrong. 

Charles is a prisoner, which makes him less than thrall as far as any Nordman is concerned, and worse still he is a prisoner who seems to think himself better than his captor, cleverer and subtler and far more powerful. Certain lessons are perhaps best taught in the old way: to take Charles as one would a thrall woman, to beat him and fuck him until he’s nothing but a bleeding, quivering heap on the floor, no longer sure in his nakedness - but _raw_ with it.

Of course, it will never go that far. Charles could stop Erik, if he really wanted to. And he will. Oh, but it seems so neat now, so parsimonious, to make Charles tell the truth in at least one way: by admitting that he lied, when he said he would never coerce Erik’s mind. 

He will strip Charles’s pride from him and remind the boy what he really is: a pretty young thing, lost in the world and surrounded by his enemies. 

Erik melts the lock again. He knows Charles hears it; his gaze flickers fast over Erik’s shoulder toward the door, though he does not flinch – not even as Erik moves closer, unbuckling his sheath-strap at one shoulder and pulling off his swords, tossing them aside. The charms sewn to the canvas jingle slightly when they hit the floor. The foxfur follows a second later, a more muffled impact.

Charles is watching him closely now, following each move of Erik’s hands with his eyes. That’s good. That means he’s on edge. Erik opens his belt slowly, using his hands rather than his power; he wants to draw Charles’s attention to the bulge in his trousers. 

Nor does Charles draw away when Erik lifts his hand and traces the backs of his fingers along Charles’s cheek, drifting down toward the corner of his blood-red mouth. Charles closes his eyes and takes in a quiet breath, lips parting only slightly. 

If Erik had any reservations, this would have undone them. He resents it – Charles’s false integrity, his brazen immodesty – the assumption Charles makes, that he is ever in control. 

Erik’s hand slips round to the back of Charles’s neck and twists in his dripping hair, holding Charles’s head immobile as he closes the last bit of distance between them.

Charles’s mouth is - _fuck_ , but Erik imagines the poets could write sagas about Charles’s mouth. The way it curves just-right to fit against Erik’s lips, the soft give of his flesh, the way his tongue tastes when Erik slides theirs together, Charles’s cheek wet and cold against Erik’s nose. Erik catches Charles’s lower lip between his teeth and Charles tilts in further. A brief shock jolts up Erik’s spine when he realizes Charles’s hand is curled around a fistful of his own shirt, as if to prevent Erik from pulling away.

He isn’t fighting back. Not even as Erik’s free hand moves down his bare torso, following past the slight dip of his waist and over his hip, Charles’s skin slippery to the touch.

So Erik pushes harder. Sinks his teeth in with a little more violence, until he’s able to pull a small, breathy sound from Charles’s throat. He grasps one cheek of Charles’s ass and drags him closer – until Charles’s entire body is pressed up against Erik’s, the bathwater soaking the fabric of Erik’s clothes. It’s a delicious sort of friction, the way his trousers cling to his cock. Charles’s lower stomach against the underside of Erik’s shaft.

It is difficult, especially like this, to remember that it won’t last. That soon – very soon – Charles will become frightened and push him away. Physically, at first. Or at least he will try. And then mentally … and _that_ , Erik must prepare for. It’s a heady thrill all its own, to think of the moment that Charles will give up. When he finally tries to escape, like he should have been trying all along. Erik wants to see Charles _yield_. To beg Erik to stop – first with his words, and then with his body. Erik doesn’t need to actually fuck him to see Charles submit.

As much as he might want to.

And that _want_ … it’s like a drug in Erik’s veins. The taste of Charles’s mouth is dizzying, and touching Charles feels unreal, like fragments of a dream knit together with a deft and careful hand, that elegant blend of anger and desire, wanting to take and to fuck (and to hold).

Erik surges forward, forcing Charles to stumble back, tripping over a clay candle jar – Erik hears it shatter distantly, as if from several rooms away – and the jolt of their bodies when Charles hits the wall. Erik traps him there and gives his hands license to roam freely. Charles’s thighs are supple and slightly rounded. His cock is half-hard in the palm of –

No. 

Erik throws out an arm of his power and grasps onto Charles’s chain, neatly coiled near the window where Erik left it that afternoon. It snaps across the room at his command and he wraps it around Charles’s throat, tugging it tight, just to see the small jump in the muscle of Charles’s cheek and the hand that leaps up automatically, fingers prying between metal and skin – as if flesh and bone were any match for Erik’s magic, as if physical strength alone could combat Erik’s power.

The other end of the chain curls around Erik’s hand. It’s not necessary, not really, but Erik likes the implication that it throws into sharp relief: at any moment, Erik could pull just a little too hard and Charles’s windpipe would be crushed like the narrow stem of a flower.

Their eyes meet. Charles is breathing in short little gasps, his pupils wide and dark, and though he isn’t trying to pull it away he’s still holding onto the chain like it’s a lifeline. 

For one brief, reeling second, Erik is convinced that this is it – the moment that Charles will pour himself into Erik’s mind and sculpt him in his own image, coax Erik’s magic into something tender and docile, the chain falling from his neck and clattering on the floor.

But he doesn’t. Erik still feels the metal, hot and strong as his own pulse. If anything his own thoughts seem sharper – even his vision is just a little bit clearer – and like this, he can see the cinnamon scatter of freckles across Charles’s nose, every fine crease in his perfect mouth.

Erik keeps the chain drawn tight as he kisses him; softer, slower than before, as if dedicated to memorizing the way Charles’s lips part for him and the beech-ashes scent of the soap he’d used. Charles kisses him back tentatively - _fear_ , Erik thinks with a spark of sudden satisfaction. Fear that not-giving-in means Erik will hurt him further. And maybe he would. Charles certainly deserves it. He’d look so pretty, down on his knees with a trickle of blood tracing its stain down his cheek, the skin of his neck rubbed raw and red, eyes bright and glassy with unshed tears.

Just for a moment, Erik wishes Charles _would_ push into his mind – not only because it would mean the end of this ridiculous game but because he wants to _feel_ him there. Because Charles’s gift is fascinating and alluring and Erik imagines it would have the effects of a very strong wine, making his whole body feel warm and heavy and boneless, exhilarating in a new and bold kind of magic.

Still, though, nothing. Just the empty echo of Erik’s own thoughts. 

The fingertips of Charles’s free hand are only just grazing the base of Erik’s throat, touching him tentatively even as Charles’s tongue slides in alongside Erik’s own. Erik can feel Charles’s heartbeat thudding through his carotid, can feel the tiny vibrations it sends out through the steel chain. 

_Fine_ , Erik thinks, in an abrupt swell of anger. Let Charles refuse to fight back. Two can play that game, and Charles will regret it soon enough. 

Erik yanks on the chain, hard enough that Charles falls onto his knees, choking at the sudden loss of air. Erik keeps him like that, breathless and trapped, as he undoes the buttons of his fly and pushes his trousers down below his hips. Erik’s cock is rock hard, in spite of the cold evening air and Charles’s resistance, flushed and jutting, the head a fraction of an inch from Charles’s mouth.

Charles stares at it like he’s never seen anything quite like it before, his eyes gone wide and round, his cheeks red with shame or lack of oxygen or both. Erik loosens the chain a fraction – only enough to allow Charles to breathe– and reaches down, fingers twisting in Charles’s hair. 

“Do you know what we do to thralls who can’t behave?” Erik murmurs, tugging Charles forward just a little and then holding him there, with the tip of Erik’s dick bouncing slightly off Charles’s lower lip, smearing it with the first few beads of Erik’s pre-come. 

Charles swallows – Erik can see the shift in his throat the same moment he _feels_ it through his power, warm skin moving against metal. He does not speak. He’s probably not capable of using his voice, with the chain still half-strangling him, but he’s silent inside Erik’s mind as well. 

“We make them submit,” Erik says, low enough that it’s almost a whisper. He tastes the word - _submit_ \- on the tip of his tongue and thinks about Charles chained down on Erik’s furs, legs spread, flesh pale against black wolf’s pelt and Erik, fucking his fingers up into Charles’s ass even as Charles squirms and cries and swears he’ll never disobey, not ever again, that he’s his – Erik’s – forever more.

His cock jumps a little at the very thought but Erik holds Charles’s gaze, feels the tension drawn out between them, thick and taut, humming with Erik’s desire, Charles’s determination.

Erik clenches his grasp tighter in Charles’s hair and Charles opens his mouth as if on cue. Erik groans out loud when as he pushes forward, into that heat, Charles’s tongue wet and flat along the underside of his cock. He doesn’t expect it, but Charles closes his lips around Erik’s shaft all the same. It’s just the friction Erik needs as he uses his grip on the chain around Charles’s neck to pull him closer, forcing him to take Erik in. 

Charles gags when the head of Erik’s dick hits the back of his throat – his hand is fisted in the fabric of Erik’s trousers, lashes fluttering against his cheek and – g-d but it feels amazing, that convulsion against Erik’s cock – and it feels even better when Erik thrusts past it and Charles swallows him down, gagging, rendered unable to breathe for reasons that have nothing to do with the chain.

Erik keeps him steady, more with the steel than with his hand, as he begins to move. Small at first – little forward jerks of his hips, just to enjoy the way Charles spasms around him, the delicate quiver of muscle against sensitive skin. And then he fucks him harder, until he’s all but pulling out before slamming back in again. He wants the back of Charles’s throat to be raw in the morning. He wants Charles’s scalp to ache from where Erik has his hold on his hair.

Fuck, but Erik has wanted this ever since he laid eyes on Charles and that delicious mouth of his, a mouth that looks like it was made to be wrapped around a thick hard cock - Charles’s knees, built to be bruised on a stone floor. It feels like they were always going to be here, that they would always end up like this, with Erik fucking Charles’s throat and Charles clutching at Erik’s hips with both hands just to have something to hold onto.

Erik lends a bit of movement to the chain around Charles’s neck, until the links are all but slithering against his skin, still drawn tight enough that it nearly cuts off Charles’s air, but with enough friction that it’s arousing all on its own – as if there’s a direct line between the metal and Erik’s cock, and the feel of Charles’s heart racing against the steel makes Erik’s own pulse jump. 

It feels incredible. Erik hasn’t fucked anyone since they left the North, and Charles’s mouth is nothing at all like Erik’s hand; Charles isn’t gagging anymore, so Erik takes that as license to thrust harder and deeper. Heat is beginning to pool low in his stomach, tight and desperate. He has lost whatever rhythm he started with; he’s just fucking now, his hand trembling slightly at the back of Charles’s head, fingers dragging through his hair over and over, not sure if he’s trying to smooth the curls down or tangle them further.

One of Charles’s hands abandons Erik’s hip to wind around the base of his cock instead, the backs of his knuckles brushing up against Erik’s balls as Charles holds him there and moves his own head instead, hollowing out his cheeks and curling his tongue up around Erik’s shaft. Erik gasps out something that may be Hebrew and may be Arabic but that certainly isn’t Norse. Charles hums a muffled response and the vibrations shudder up Erik’s cock until it’s all he can do to keep from coming right then, the chain around Charles’s throat briefly contracting – completely outside Erik’s control, reflex rather than intent.

It hits Erik all at once, briefly (but not completely) jarring his attention away from Charles and his dick in Charles’s mouth, the realization that Charles isn’t resisting. That he’s participating - that he _likes_ it. Likes men. Likes _sucking cock._

Perhaps he should have seen it all along, predicted it from the way Charles looked at him, or the way he approached him out of his bath, naked and drawing far too close. But he didn’t – and now is hardly the time to dwell on it, when Erik is already practically on the verge. The way Charles curls a hand around his balls doesn’t help; Erik’s cock pulses in Charles’s mouth and from the look in his eyes, Erik gets the sense that if his lips weren’t otherwise occupied Charles would have smirked at that. 

Erik doesn’t intend to give him the opportunity. Charles’s tongue teases at his frenulum and Erik feels the muscles in his pelvis going tight, his vision starting to blur out at the edges. Erik can tell Charles would swallow if he let him – that he’d happily take Erik’s come down his throat – but prisoners don’t get to choose. So it’s out of spite that Erik pulls himself from Charles’s mouth, just in time; with a quick stroke of his own hand down his length he’s coming, the chain pulled too-tight around Charles’s throat and hot enough to burn, Erik’s cock shooting out its load of seed, long streaks of it splattering Charles’s face, catching his still-open lips and pooling beneath his left eye, clotting in his hair.

For a fraction of a second Charles looks shocked – and Erik can’t help feeling smug, that he managed to surprise Charles at all. And then … there it is, the disgust twisting Charles’s features, and he’s lifting a hand to his cheek but Erik gets there first, smearing his own come on Charles’s face, rubbing it into every inch of bared skin, relishing the way Charles clenches his eyes shut and swallows, hard, trying not to gag. 

Erik wipes his messy hand on Charles’s hair and pushes him back, sending Charles tumbling onto the floor as Erik steps away and tucks himself back into his trousers, doing up the buttons with deft fingers that are no longer trembling. Charles watches him from the stones, propped on his elbows but not bothering to stand again, his brows knit together and his skin flushed from cheeks to chest. If he became erect while sucking Erik he’s lost it now; his cock hangs limp and flaccid between his legs. He looks so pale, so vulnerable, and Erik thinks it’s a decidedly pleasant change from before.

The chain around Charles’s neck loosens and slips down his spine, winding down his body until it’s circling round Charles’s ankle once more, steel links melting together to form the shackle. 

“You will sleep like this,” Erik says. “Naked and dirty, to remind you of your shame.”

That night he ignores the way Charles shivers in the corner, too far from the fire to prevent frost from catching his wet hair, his body curled in on itself, chasing whatever heat he can. It is not so cold in the tower that Charles won’t survive til dawn, and as far as Erik is concerned, that is the only matter of import.

He doesn’t dwell on the fact that Charles never tried to stop him, never forced his mind, not even when Erik splattered his face with his seed. Even though he could have. He doesn’t want to wonder just how far Charles would have let him go – if Charles would have let Erik flip him over on the fur pallet and fuck his ass, if he would have cried the whole time but never lifted so much of a thread of magic to stop it.

He brings the tub out again the next morning, still filled with the old bathwater, and lets Charles wash himself off. He’d kept the water by the fire overnight, so it has not frozen over but it’s still bracingly cold as Charles lowers himself into the tub’s belly, his arms shaking and his lips pale. The water should not be too hot, though. Erik knows what the healers say; a cold body must be warmed slowly and not allowed to freeze again. 

Not that he tells Charles this, of course. Let Charles think him cruel and callous. It’s better that way. It gives him a taste of what’s in store for him, if he continues to keep his silence: a slow death in the frozen fields of Bohemia, ravens picking at his living flesh – useless, and thus left behind.

\--

25.

Erik hands Charles over to Geitir and some of the others after Charles has finished in the bath, to be watched. Charles has been silent all morning, and the way he looks at Erik eventually begins to eat away at Erik’s patience – his gaze feels like thorns, digging into the back of Erik’s neck. He’s certain Charles expects him to feel guilt over what happened, and perhaps this is some part of that: Charles’s desires leaking out and clinging at the fringes of Erik’s thoughts, and while he might not be trying to change Erik’s mind perhaps Erik can still feel him there, lurking.

Erik doesn’t trust Charles not to abuse the length of the chain at his ankle; he binds Charles’s wrists himself with cloth, tight enough that the knot will have to be cut loose. The men take him to the stables while Erik goes to meet the settlers at the gate. The group is large in number, and they have not lost any on the journey. The North certainly will have no trouble filling the halls and streets of Ausburch with their own.

Erik does not allow his crew to linger after the settlers arrive. They have rested well over the past week, and while these bare Christian cities are nothing like the warm homes of the Nordmenn, Erik fears that languishing too long will produce a sense of complacency in his men that he’d rather avoid.

So they set out on the road, following the edge of the forest for a few leagues before splitting off north again. Prisoners should walk behind the crew, in the position of dishonor – but Erik does not like the idea of having Charles out of his sight for so long. He’s well aware that if Charles were to use his magic on any of Erik’s men, Erik would likely have no way of telling, so perhaps having Charles close is no aegis, but it sits better with Erik’s sense all the same. To make sure his men don’t get the wrong idea, he uses rope to tie Charles’s wrists to his horse’s saddle, forcing him to stumble along as best he can. Every now and then, Erik spurs the animal with his heel – and every time, Charles has to grasp at the rope to keep from falling in the mud.

He notices Wolverine watching Charles when he thinks Erik isn’t looking, and Erik wonders if Wolverine thinks he should have killed Charles before they left Ausburch, rather than burdening the crew with the task of carrying him with them. But no … difficult though Wolverine may be to read, Erik detects no malice in his eyes. Concern, though – yes, but not just that. There’s something else, too, something subtler in the lines around Wolverine’s mouth drawing his lips flat and tight. 

Erik gestures for Wolverine to join him, dismounting from his horse to walk several paces ahead, putting some distance between them and the rest of the crew. 

“What is it?” Erik says, keeping his voice lowered – not that it will do much good, he’s well aware, if Charles has set up camp in the back of Wolverine’s mind.

“What’s what? …Captain.”

Erik tilts his head back just slightly, toward Charles and the others. “The boy,” he says. “I’ve seen you watching him.”

Wolverine shrugs, hitching the standard up so that the pole rests back against his shoulder. “It’s like I told you before – ”

Erik shakes his head. “No. There’s something else. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t recall you being so damn nosy.”

“Consider it a matter of security. The boy is a witch and a prisoner.”

Wolverine grunts, and it’s several seconds before he speaks again. Then: “Do you really think it’s going to work, the way you’re treating him?”

“Given that I’ve shown him far more courtesy than any Nordman would, I can’t say I follow.”

“He’s just a child, Erik. Humiliating him isn’t going to make him talk.”

“Just a child? Don’t tell me you really believe that. Not after your speech the other day.” A tendril of Erik’s power slips out almost despite him, to curl over the links of Charles’s chain, now looped between his ankles. “He’s a mind-witch. You said it yourself - he’s dangerous.”

“And I meant it. Doesn’t mean I think all this is a good idea. Kinda like poking a sleeping dragon, if you know what I mean.”

“No. No, I don’t, in fact, _know what you mean_.” Erik halts mid-step, throwing out one hand to order his crew to stop, keeping the distance between them set. He turns to face Wolverine full-on, and in the same movement he reaches for his own magic and spreads it out, grasping the blade of the ax strapped to Wolverine’s back. “There’s one thing about that boy’s power that I didn’t mention.”

“Yeah?” Wolverine says – and his voice has gone a bit rough around the edges; he might not be able to sense when Erik is using his power, but he can still tell when Erik is on edge; he’s always been able to. “What’s that, then?”

“He can influence your mind. Change it, bend it to his will.”

“What the – and you think that’s what he’s doing now, do you? You think this is _him_ talking.” Wolverine looks more angry than shocked. Erik files that information away for later perusal and nods.

Charles got to Wolverine. He must have. It’s the only explanation that accounts for Wolverine’s sudden sympathy for the boy he used to fear. He’s in there now, gnawing away at the foundations of Wolverine’s mind, twisting him into … something else.

“I do. And to him, I propose a little game. Or, rather – a race.” A crooked smile tugs the corners of Erik’s mouth. “Which comes first - will he leash my power? Or will your head end up in the dirt at my feet?”

A slight tension grips the Wolverine’s neck – and Erik knows he’s thinking about the same ax Erik has hold of, even if he refuses to reach for it. “Don’t be stupid, Erik,” Wolverine growls out, voice nearly guttural. “If he really is in my head, what kind of difference do you think killing me is going to make? If he’s in my brain, you can be damn sure he’s in yours, too.”

“And still you don’t deny that he’s in your mind.”

“Can’t imagine I’d be able to tell, even if he were. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But there are good fucking reasons for what I said, and they’re just as true even if he’s the one making me say them. Let go of my _fucking_ ax.”

“Interesting,” Erik says. “I would have thought, after learning what the boy can do, you would have insisted I kill him.”

“Maybe I would, if that didn’t sound like an impossible task.”

“Yet he has not lifted a finger to help himself thus far. He accepts this treatment willingly.”

“Is that what this is about?” Wolverine snorts. “You’re trying to see how far you can push him before he breaks? Right. Sounds like you really thought this through.”

“He gave me his word that he would never use his power against me.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t believe him.”

“Why would I? He has given me no reason to trust him. He still will not so much as give reason for why he was wandering the woods alone at that time of night.”

“So you want to prove that he has just as little integrity as you do. Maybe I was wrong about who was the child.”

Erik’s brows lift, but he lets it go. He refuses to let Wolverine bait him. “You said there were good reasons for treating him more mercifully. What are they?”

“You don’t know the extent of his power. You might think you do, but you don’t. I guarantee you don’t. I just don’t think it wise, to be playing with fire this way. You don’t know his magic, or his patience. And you still don’t know why he’s here, or what he wants from you. If there’s a long game in the works, you shouldn’t be playing before you know the rules … or your opponent.”

Erik considers for a moment, releasing his power’s grasp on Wolverine’s ax – for the most part, at least. Loathe though he is to admit it, Wolverine is right. Erik has been torturing Charles out of spite, not because he thinks it will truly break him. Charles’s restraint will loosen long before his tongue. And as much as Erik might want to prove how fragile Charles’s promises really are, such proofs require risk. Charles cannot be untangled the way any other prisoner could. He – and his power – requires a more delicate approach.

“It’s possible,” Erik says, “that he was lying about his ability. We have no proof he’s capable of all he claims. And it would be clever, to make such assertions. It ties our hands.”

Wolverine shrugs. “Maybe.” He sounds as if he doubts it.

Erik gestures toward the crew to resume march and he and Wolverine fall back into step with the others. Privately, Erik considers it: the possibility of asking Charles to prove his allegation, to influence the actions of some other where Erik can see and judge it for himself.

When they have been walking for six hours, the sun drifting down toward the horizon and dragging the shadows of the trees out long and dark, it begins to snow.

\--

24.

_November 1115, Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire_

They camp on the banks of the Danube, a few hours’ walk past where it cuts into the Leth River. Some of the men grumble about retracing their steps and following the road back up to Regensburg, but they know where the orders came from.

Erik pitches his tent on the east side of the camp; he wakes early as it is, but he likes the idea of facing the rising sun when he walks outside. He wants to feel the dawn creeping over his pallet, golden and rose and never quite slow enough. He chooses the precise location because it is situated directly over an underground seam of iron, perhaps three arms’ length below the earth’s surface. It’s strong enough that Erik can use it to magnetize Charles’s chain directly to the ground and still give him room to walk about the tent. 

Charles flexes his wrists when Erik cuts the rope that had bound them together, briefly exposing a glimpse of pale and unmarred skin. “Is this always going to be the mode of travel?” he says, looking up at Erik a moment later.

“Clarify.”

“You pulling me along behind your horse like a piece of cargo.”

Erik lifts one brow. “That depends,” he says.

“On what?”

“Your cooperation.” Erik crouches down with his pack to start unrolling his furs, spreading them out on the ground for his bed. 

“Do you intend to pleasure yourself with me again, then?”

Erik finishes with the last fur and sits back on his heels, tying up the top of his bag once more. “No.”

Charles goes silent for a few seconds, watching Erik, his expression as immutable as it is unreadable. Then: “Why not?”

“Do I owe you a reason?” Perhaps Erik ought to say he simply doesn’t find Charles attractive, but he has the feeling both of them would know it was a lie.

Charles sits down on a particularly large rock – it was impossible to find completely flat land, in this area – resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “You don’t want me anymore?”

“Like I said: the reason is irrelevant.”

“Once was enough, then. You took me, you fucked my face, and now you’re bored with me.”

“Don’t be vulgar; it doesn’t suit you.”

“What does suit me, then? Tell me; I’m curious to know.”

_“Silence.”_

Charles pulls a face and shakes his head. “It really doesn’t. I’ve given you silence all day and it doesn’t seem to have improved your mood much at all. I think you find me more suitable nude.”

Erik makes a harsh, incredulous noise through his nose. “You think rather highly of yourself, don’t you?”

“No, but _you_ certainly seem to. Your arousal is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“I hope you don’t talk like that around your mother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I don’t have a mother.”

“Everyone has a mother,” Erik says.

“Not me.”

“Dead?”

“No.” Charles pulls a thread loose from the knee of his trousers, rubbing it between his fingers.

“What, then? Abandoned you as a child? Grew tired of your insolence and left you out on the street?”

Charles laughs and shakes his head. “No again. I told you already: I have no mother.”

Erik feels his patience growing thin. “Why do you insist on arguing about this? Absent or otherwise, everyone has a mother. You may hate her, and you may never have met her, but she is yours nonetheless. Arguing otherwise is a symptom of obstinacy and nothing more.”

Charles just shrugs and shifts on the rock, stretching his legs out across the dirt and crossing them at the ankle, ignoring the way the chain tugs against his flesh. “As you say.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Charles smiles, only slightly, and lifts both hands with palms facing Erik. “I yield to your superior wisdom. Captain.”

How is it, Erik wonders, that even in surrender Charles leaves Erik feeling as if all his words have been torn apart, blown away on the wind? 

He reminds himself that he has demands to make of Charles tonight, and that he cannot allow himself to be so easily distracted.

“You say you can control others’ minds. Why haven’t you?” 

Charles frowns. “You mean, in order to escape?”

“I mean at _all_. You’ve been a prisoner for over a week now, and still you’ve made no attempt to escape that I have seen. Nor have you taken efforts to make things easier on yourself.”

“I’ve not seen the necessity.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that? That you are willingly traveling the wilderness with a pack of what I’m sure you’ve been told are brutal savages? No.” 

Outside the flap of the tent, someone says Erik’s name. He gets up and crosses over to let one of the men hand him two bowls of _fiskesuppe_. Dinner.

Erik brings them inside and sits back down on his bed of furs. He does not give Charles his bowl, but instead sets it down on a flat bit of earth, still steaming. Charles is still watching Erik, not the food, even though he is – he must be – half-starving by now. 

“I don’t consider you savages,” Charles says after a moment, soft and steady.

“You should.”

Charles just pulls his knees up toward his chest and wraps his arms around them, watching Erik over the freckled skin of his crossed forearms. Somehow the blue of his eyes is bright as ever, even in the dimness of Erik’s lamplight. “I think you do what you must to survive,” he says. “Not as individuals, but as a culture. You are ruthless. But only in your determination to progress, at any price. If we must make the comparison between Nordmenn and Christians, I must say I prefer the former. Regarding the latter, I find I cannot respect a people so enamored by their own willful ignorance.”

“Pretty words,” Erik says. “Your power, Charles. Why haven’t you used it?”

“I promised I wouldn’t.”

“You promised you wouldn’t use it against _me_. You made no such claims for my crew.”

Charles lets out a quiet breath, catching the tendril of hair that has fallen across his face and sending it glancing across his cheekbone. “You think I misled you,” he says at last. “Don’t you? You think I was bluffing.”

“I am a man of reason. I believe that which I can see.”

Charles has gone silent again, so Erik picks up his bowl of soup and begins to eat. The fish is fresh, for once. That will not last, once they leave the area surrounding the Danube. But now … for now, it is good, seasoned with herbs raided from the Ausburch store rooms. He extends a thread of his power to toy with the interlocking loops of Charles’s chain. It’s almost as good as touching Charles, as curling his own fingers around Charles’s slender ankle, feeling the soft slide of skin beneath his thumb, smoothing over a knob of bone and then the hollow underneath. 

For a mind-witch, he thinks, Charles is remarkably obtuse. Erik cannot imagine a world in which he wouldn’t want Charles. And having him once did not assuage his desire. If anything, it amplified it, until the mere sight of Charles makes it feel as if there is something burning beneath his skin, a fever that will not break. 

“You want me to prove it,” Charles says at last. He has abandoned the loose thread at his knee by the time Erik looks up, their gazes meeting across the tent. “You actually _want_ me to control one of your men, just to reassure you that you haven’t been taken for a fool.”

“Yes.”

Charles watches him for one long, hard moment, and for a second Erik thinks perhaps he is considering it, what lie he might tell next to explain away the last. But then the flap of the tent is pushed open and Geitir steps through. He does not pause – not even to so much as glance toward Erik or Charles – before crossing the floor in two quick strides and bending over to pick up the second bowl of _fiskesuppe_ from where it sits at Erik’s side. He passes the bowl to Charles, who murmurs a quiet “thank you.” And then Geitir is gone, though not before sparing a glance over his shoulder at Erik, and an uncharacteristic wink.

“That – ” Erik begins.

“That,” Charles says, “was me.”

Erik manages to keep his expression neutral, he thinks. Well. That certainly undermines his theory about Charles faking the entire thing for leverage. 

He doesn’t think it unreasonable, that he should doubt it. Quite the contrary; it was practical. It was taking safe precaution. So why did Wolverine so readily accept that what Charles said was true? It seems unlike him.

“Impressive,” Erik says at last. “When did your magic manifest?”

“I’ve always had this ability,” Charles says, lifting one shoulder, his gaze steady.

“Surely not since birth. Perhaps when you were very young - ?”

Charles shakes his head. “Always.”

Erik lets it go. “Mine first presented when I was twelve. The _Gaon_ \- that’s like your bishop, I suppose - said it was a blessing from HaShem. If I had been born to Christian parents, I would have been stoned to death as a witch.”

“Yes,” Charles agrees. “You likely would have been.”

“So how did you survive?” Growing up here, in the middle of Crusader territory, Erik cannot imagine a young Charles, still immature in his powers, being allowed to live for long.

Charles smiles, and the expression makes him seem more beautiful than ever. “Let’s not talk about me.” 

Erik takes another spoonful of his soup; Charles, he notices, has not touched his own food. By now, it must have nearly gone cold in his cupped hands. “You do not seem disturbed, to learn that I am a Jew.” 

Another inconsistency with the story of Charles growing up around Swabia or Franconia. As much as they hate witches, the Christians hate Jews and Muslims even more. Erik’s people killed their Lord, after all. What crime the Muslims committed, Erik still has not been able to suss out. Privately, he suspects the Crusaders do not need a reason to burn entire peoples at the gates of their proclaimed holy city. Christianity is a vicious creed, and its disciples more vicious still.

“I didn’t seem disturbed when I thought you were one of the Nordmenn, either. Are you disappointed?”

“More confused.”

When Charles smiles, it’s a tiny sliver of an expression. Erik would think it unintentional, were it not for his growing suspicion that nothing Charles does is without intent. “A Jew, living in the North. Are you a thrall, then?”

Erik nods. 

“A thrall they trust to lead a crew of their best warriors. You are a far more confusing character than I, my friend.”

 _I am not your friend._ “The North values witchcraft, while its enemies burn the powerful at stake. The Nordmenn recognize strength, and they use it.”

“That they do,” Charles murmurs, his gaze sliding away from Erik’s to focus on his soup, circling his spoon idly round the bowl. “Perhaps that is why the valkyrie of old are said to only choose Nordmenn to fight in their undead armies, when the Apocalypse comes.”

Both Erik’s brows lift at that. “And what know _you_ of valkyrie?”

Charles glances up from his soup, setting the spoon down again. “The North has invaded much of the greater Continent. Where they have not invaded, they have pillaged and fought. Even southerners know the Northern tales, now. Pagan legends, to be sure – nothing a mother would say to her child at bedtime – but whispers around a campfire? Superstitions can grow out of any soil in which they’re planted.”

“Do you believe such tales?”

“Every society, it seems, has their own religion. Their own stories. Who is to say one is true but not another?” 

“Priests.”

Charles laughs. “Yes. I suppose so. But it’s not very rational, is it? All men swear by the tales they were told at their mothers’ teats.” He pushes his soup away, still untouched. “Personally, I choose to believe all such legends are true in some way. To assume otherwise is solipsism at best.”

“And at worst?”

“Tyranny.”

They fall for a moment into a strange lull, broken only by the scrape of Erik’s spoon against the bottom of his bowl. 

“You’re right,” Erik says, eventually. “The Crusaders – ”

“Little boys who believe their world is the _only_ world,” Charles says. “Only instead of teat-milk, they drink communion wine. The blood of Christ, and the thousands they’ve slain in his name.”

Erik is stunned into silence. It is quite possibly the last thing he ever would have expected to hear Charles say. Charles has surprised him enough already, it is true, but even with all his candor, Charles is still a Sudrman. And, although he certainly spares no words in its defense, Erik is certain he was raised a Christian. Yet here he sits: a pale slip of a thing with his prince’s hands and rose-red lips, speaking of valkyrie, denying faith in any one religion, and all but accusing his kinsmen of savagery.

“You could be killed for suggesting as much,” Erik says after several seconds have passed. Even to himself his voice sounds odd, almost breathless.

“Perhaps you would like to throw the first stone?” Charles offers, one corner of his mouth curling upward.

“Who taught a boy like you to talk like that?”

“One overhears all kinds of conversations, with my gift.”

Erik had not given it much thought before, what being a child with Charles’s magic might have been like. He had been far too concerned with questions of security. But surely … surely, it explains much. Charles has the bearings of a much older man. And perhaps that is what he is; no boy exposed to all the darkest corners of the minds he encounters can hope to remain a boy for long.

“Are you going to eat that?” Erik says at last, nodding toward Charles’s bowl of soup.

“It’s gone cold now. It’s yours if you want it.”

The North does not waste. Erik eats the rest of Charles’s soup hurriedly, slurping down broth before it can frost over. Then he builds a fire, in the very middle of the tent. A small one, just a few smoldering coals, but it will do to warm them through the night. Charles lies down on the small pallet Erik made for him (the thinnest furs; he will feel rocks poking into his back till morning) and gazes up, as if he can see through cloth and count the stars.

Erik almost warns Charles: _you’ll starve if you don’t eat something_ , but then he thinks better of it.

Charles might have a silver tongue, but it isn’t a loose one. He’s Erik’s prisoner, for better or for worse.

\--

23.

_December 1115, Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire_

“Why don’t you fuck me anymore?” Charles asks over breakfast three mornings later, crumbling a wheat cracker between his fingers.

“‘Anymore?’ I fucked you one time. Hardly the beginning of a pattern.”

“‘Again,’ then. Why haven’t you fucked me again?”

“I must say, I had no idea you enjoyed it so much.”

Charles’s gaze flickers upward, as if he wanted to roll his eyes but stopped himself just in time. “I’m only curious,” he says. “You seemed so eager, before. I think it’s a valid question.”

“What did I say the last time you asked me this?”

“You told me the reason was irrelevant.”

“And so it is. Now finish eating and help me pack up this tent.”

\--

They raid Plzeň castle, as instructed.

The battle is bloodier than expected; the castle is on a hill, and its defenders saw Erik’s crew coming from leagues away. The Nordmenn had neither the element of surprise nor control of the high ground, but still they swarmed forth. 

Erik forbids his men the use of catapults; if the castle is to be settled, the walls must be left intact. So they use grappling hooks instead, once the castlemen have exhausted their arrows. Erik leaves his twin swords in his tent for this battle and swings an ax instead. He bears no shield. He does not need one. 

The battlements are cleared by the time Erik pulls himself over the crenellated walls onto the walk. His men have pushed the southerners down toward the keep; they are fighting on the stairs, pushing bodies off the steps and sending them falling like rag dolls to the stone floor far below. Erik almost trips over a Sudrman on the seventh step. Stab wound to the upper thorax; he’d survive, probably, if left to his own devices. Erik chops his head in half, just below the nose. The eyeballs are still twitching in their sockets when Erik kicks the rest of the body off the stairs.

He has just killed his fifth when he hears overhead a bone-piercing screech. He jerks his gaze up just in time to see something black and bird-like streaking past the tower, a sooty smudge on the pale blue sky above. It’s too fast to be sure, but –

All the rest of the men are still locked in their own battles, and seem not to have heard anything but the wheeze of breath and clash of metal. But Erik knows he did not imagine it. The sound … he’s heard it before, if only once. The same sound the valravn made, just before Erik saw the valkyrie, two weeks prior. 

Erik stays there, chest heaving and his gaze fixed on the sky, for several minutes, but the valravn does not return. Nor is there any sign of the black spectre Erik saw before. Just one solitary cloud drifting past, thin and white. 

Erik has to force himself to look away and run down the stairs, chasing the fight into the keep.

The floor is slick with blood by the time it is finished. Erik can taste it in his mouth. Not his own blood; someone else’s. They impale the heads of the castle’s senior knights from the banner poles and hang them out over the gate, on display. The wounded among their own men, they treat immediately. Erik uses his power to guide iron arrowheads out of flesh, and to sense when a blade has struck a man’s vital organs. The Nordmenn’s injuries are few; with Erik’s magic on their side, most enemy weapons were destroyed before they could be used.

The crew raids the store rooms for food; the men are sick of saltfish and crackers already. They find a few jars of pickled meat that will keep for the road, along with a few bags of lentils and dry corn. There is bread and venison, as well; those, they will eat tonight, before they can spoil.

Erik has the uninjured men load supplies onto a few packhorses to bring down to the camp. He knows they would rather be celebrating, still blood-drunk and dizzy with the thrill of a fight, but Erik prefers to see his loose ends tied tight.

Before he left, Erik had moved Charles’s chain to the left by a few metres, still magnetized to the iron seam, until it had shifted enough to allow Charles to sit out in front of the tent instead of within. He is still there when Erik returns, reclining in the sun, apparently heedless of both snow and cold. 

Charles opens his eyes when Erik draws close enough, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “You – ” He stops.

Charles is staring at him, gaze slowly traveling down from Erik’s face to his torso, then lower still – and it takes Erik a moment to realize that what has caught Charles’s attention is the blood. In the fray, Erik’s ax had served to behead two men. He still remembers how the blood had felt, like warm rain on his face, drenching his tunic. His clothes are stiff with it now, and Erik knows if he were to drag his fingers back through his hair he’d find it there as well, clumping the strands, a gob of it congealed by his left temple. 

Charles is looking at his face again, but it’s with a dazed expression that wears uncanny on him, not quite settling into his features. Erik has never seen Charles with a look like that – but then again, he supposes, he doesn’t really know Charles all that well.

“What?” Erik snaps, when Charles’s stare finally begins to grate at him. He starts forward, heading for the tent and a fresh change of clothes. His muscles ache; he could do with a hot bath as well. “It’s not mine, if that’s what you’re so concerned abou – ”

Charles reaches for Erik as soon as he’s close enough, both hands twisting in his tunic heedless of the way his grasp squeezes blood from the cloth, sending a small bead of it slicing down Charles’s wrist toward his forearm, dark and viscous. Erik almost goes for his ax. Almost. And it’s in that moment’s hesitation, that second’s pause, that Charles pulls him in, lifting up on the balls of his feet to press his mouth to Erik’s.

Charles’s lips are soft and hot and forceful, and some tiny voice in the back of Erik’s mind registers the sound of cloth tearing; somehow Charles has yanked his tunic just hard enough to rip the heavy fabric. The fingers of Charles’s other hand are threading back through his hair now, teasing through the gore to tangle the locks round his knuckles, holding Erik so that he can’t pull away. 

But while pulling away might have been Erik’s first instinct, it is not his last. Charles’s tongue is slick and adept, already parting Erik’s lips to flick at the backs of his teeth. A dare, almost: a standard that Erik must rise to meet.

And so he does. He tears the free end of Charles’s chain from the ground a breath later, and the links have only just closed around Erik’s own wrist when he drives them both back, one hand splayed between Charles’s shoulder blades to keep him steady as they duck into the cool shadow of Erik’s tent.

Later, Erik will blame it on the heat of battle – the way victory still sears through his veins like the sweetest drug, raring for another fight and rending Erik drunk on the sheer savagery of it all. He can taste the salt of his own sweat on Charles’s mouth, and Charles’s skin is warm to the touch when Erik strips off his shirt, dragging his nails down Charles’s spine. 

Charles holds to him as if Erik is the only thing keeping him on his feet, nearly ripping Erik’s tunic further in his eagerness to strip it off over Erik’s head. Charles’s tongue is swirling round Erik’s nipple a moment later, his eyes shut and his cheeks flushed from the cold or desire or both. 

“I need you,” Charles whispers – gasps – against Erik’s collarbone as he lays a trail of bites and kisses, chasing after Erik’s mouth again. “Please – fuck me, I know you want to, just _do_ it – make me _hurt_ \- ”

Erik’s cock strains against his trousers, and he makes sure Charles can feel it, grinding rough against Charles’s hips until Charles is moaning, tilting his head back – and _fuck_ , but surely he has no idea what it does to Erik, Charles exposing his bare throat like that. Erik is as tempted to rip it out with his teeth as he is to lick it. 

“Be careful what you ask for, boy,” Erik growls, using his power to push the metal button of Charles’s fly through its hole, yanking his pants down past his ass. “I’m not going to be gentle.”

“I don’t want you to be,” Charles says – and for some g-dforsaken reason when Erik looks in his eyes he _believes_ it.

 _< <Fuck me the way you killed those men.>>_ Charles’s voice in his head is soft, but there is something of a demand to it, clinging along the edges like fine lace, and Erik cannot help the way it sends blood throbbing through his cock.

Erik places one hand in the center of Charles’s chest and pushes him back, hard enough that Charles loses his balance, tumbling onto the thick-piled furs of Erik’s makeshift bed. Charles doesn’t make any pretense at modesty; he lies where Erik has felled him, legs splayed slightly, his dick hard and curving upward, the flushed tip smearing pre-come on the skin just beneath his navel. His trousers are a tangled mess around his knees but Charles’s focus is on Erik alone, watching him with bright glassy eyes as Erik pulls off his belt and strips off his trousers and boots. The moment Erik’s cock is exposed Charles wets his lips, and that brief flicker of pink tongue is enough to have Erik curling his hand around his own shaft, too desperate for friction to wait. 

He pulls three firm strokes down his length before even that becomes not-enough - and then Erik is tugging at Charles’s trousers, trying to drag them the rest of the way off. One side comes easily enough, but the second won’t follow - Erik is already muttering expletives before he remembers the chain, and abandons the task as lost. As long as Charles can spread his legs.

Charles is grasping for Erik’s flesh as soon as he’s within reach, pulling him down between his thighs – and there’s nothing at all innocent about the way Charles _writhes_ beneath him, the heat of his body making Erik feel strangely light-headed … or perhaps that’s just the way Charles grinds himself up against Erik, his shaft perfectly lined up with Erik’s own. 

Charles’s tongue is on his cheek, and it takes Erik one strange, reeling second to realize Charles is actually licking the dead man’s blood from his skin, with all the hungry lust of a man long-starved. 

For some reason, this only serves to make him even harder. 

Charles has blood on his hands when he drags his fingers over Erik’s mouth, and Erik could have sworn that he was getting off on it somehow, possibly on the blood itself but more likely on the violence it represented, given Charles’s request. 

Fine, Erik thinks, his nails digging in just a little too deep as he grasps Charles’s hips and flips him onto his stomach. Let Charles’s wish be granted. He’s certainly asking for it, with the way he’s arching his back beneath Erik now, presenting his ass like a bitch in heat, Charles’s hole clenching around nothing and his fingers twisting in the bear pelts the way they had in Erik’s hair. 

_Please_ , Charles keeps groaning, and whether it’s out loud or in his head Erik can no longer tell. But it’s obvious that Charles is aching to be filled by Erik’s dick; he’s begging for it, whimpering when Erik’s fingers brush the soft skin around his hole, ass twitching up toward Erik’s touch and his toes already curling.

“Look at you,” Erik murmurs, and he rakes his nails down Charles’s asscheeks, spreading them to get a better view, and relishing the way Charles’s pale skin contrasts with the red scratches Erik leaves in his wake. Charles’s thighs are trembling with want, and Erik knows he’s only barely holding himself up on his knees. “You like it, don’t you? You like a _man’s_ touch. Is that it? A thick, wet cock to fill you up and fuck you like a whore.”

Charles’s breath has gone ragged but he doesn’t flinch when Erik spits into his hand – he has oil in his pack somewhere, but he doesn’t give a fuck about Charles’s comfort – Charles will take whatever Erik gives him – and he doesn’t flinch, either, when Erik presses a finger into his eager, vise-tight hole. 

“But you’re not a whore, are you?” Erik continues, twisting his finger to get the knuckle in properly, his own lashes fluttering briefly when he’s finally pushed all the way in. “You don’t want money. You’ll do it for anyone, any time …. You’re nothing more than a common _slut._ ”

Erik wastes little time before he’s pushing in a second finger alongside the first, and a delicious shudder ripples down Charles’s spine. Erik leans in and bites, hard, breaking the skin and leaving his own bloody mark at the small of Charles’s back. 

“Yes,” Charles says almost instantly. “Anything you want …. I’ll give it to you, anything ….”

He’s pressing back now, grinding his ass against Erik’s hand and all but fucking himself on Erik’s fingers. It’s the most arousing thing Erik has ever seen.

Erik’s cock is leaking pre-come, the stuff dripping onto the fur pelts beneath them, the head of his dick wet and gleaming with it. Erik fights to keep from wrapping his free hand back around his erection and pulling himself off, just like this, blowing his load all over the round curve of Charles’s ass, pooling in those twin dimples just above his cheeks. Erik already knows Charles looks good covered in come. But he’s after a more satisfying prize, this time.

He pulls his fingers free of Charles’s body a second later. He hasn’t actually stretched him out very much at all; there’s a damn large part of him that wants to hear Charles scream. Still, he bothers to spit once more, onto Charles’s asshole this time, appreciating the way Charles’s muscles tense on impact. 

Then he curls his fingers in Charles’s snow-wet hair, pulling Charles’s head roughly back. The chain is still looped around Erik’s wrist; the steel links fall sinuous along Charles’s back, the steel still cold from the snow. Erik uses his grip for leverage, Charles’s eyes squeezed tight shut, his mouth open and trembling, as Erik lines the tip of his cock up with Charles’s hole and slowly pushes in. 

Charles cries out, his whole body tensing as the head of Erik’s dick breaches the ring of muscle around his asshole. That tension makes Charles’s hole tighter still as Erik pushes steadily on, a hot and blinding pleasure that has Erik releasing Charles’s hair to clench both hands round his waist instead, preventing Charles from pulling off his cock, if he tries to fight.

The moment Erik buries himself balls-deep in Charles’s ass, it feels as if something in his gut has gone sweet and molten, his cock pulsing in the heat of Charles’s body, harder than ever. Charles is utterly still, and when Erik curls a hand around his neck he can feel Charles’s pulse skittering wildly away beneath his fingertips, frantic as a moth at a flame.

Erik lets himself bask in it a second longer, the impossible grip of Charles’s hole around his dick, the freckles he can make out scattered across Charles’s shoulders when he tilts forward to bite a bruise at Charles’s nape. And then he starts to move.

It hurts, for Charles. It couldn’t _not_ \- Erik barely prepared him, after all, and even if Charles has taken a cock before it can’t have been often. Not with the way Charles is breathing, little hitching gasps with every thrust of Erik’s hips, almost like the sound of a boy sobbing. And Erik knows that if he wanted to, Charles could stop him with a thought – but he likes to think of it this way instead, of Charles trapped by Erik’s strength, rendered helpless as a thrall.

Erik pushes him roughly down and Charles goes easily, pressing his face into the pelts and muffling his cries, fingers white-knuckled around the furs for a different reason now. Erik fucks him hard and fast, pistoning his hard dick in and out of Charles like he could split the boy in two with it and spill his secrets onto the dirt like so much blood. 

Charles feels fucking amazing on his cock, and Erik can already feel his climax tightening in his balls, a heat swelling quickly between his legs. But not yet, not yet. He doesn’t want to give up this moment, with Charles shivering beneath him, asshole clenching down on Erik’s shaft over and over and over again, those desperate, mangled sounds half-silenced against Erik’s bed. 

Erik pulls his cock out of Charles’s body. It’s slick with pre-come and blood - he must have torn Charles somewhere – and darkened, almost purple with Erik’s want, the head twitching in the open air as more pre-come seeps out of the slit. Charles’s asshole is stretched from Erik’s girth, still clenching even though there’s nothing there. On impulse, Erik slaps his dick twice against the crevice of Charles’s ass and watches Charles jump. His cock is totally rigid now, unyielding even in his own grasp as he positions it at Charles’s hole and pushes back in.

Charles’s body yields more easily this time and Erik buries himself back inside him in a single smooth stroke. He groans, loudly. He doesn’t care if the crew can hear him. In fact, he knows they can. And he wants them to hear. He wants them to see the bruises on Charles’s neck tomorrow and know who left them there. He wants Wolverine to listen and take this as evidence of Charles’s submission, Erik’s prowess over the ‘dangerous’ thrall, and when Charles is walking bow-legged tomorrow he wants everyone to know it was Erik’s cock that was plunging into Charles’s ass all night long. 

He winds his fingers back into Charles’s hair to yank Charles’s head up again. “I want them to hear you,” he mutters, shifting slightly so that he’s straddling Charles’s legs, making it easier to thrust harder and deeper. “Every last one of them. Let them hear your shame. Let them sit in their tents and around their fires and grow hard because of you. They’ll touch themselves, listening to the sound of me fucking you. Come tomorrow, every man in my crew will have spilled their seed to the dream of raping you.”

Charles moans, and Erik jerks his hips forward again, punctuating it with the slap of balls on flesh. 

“That’s right,” Erik says, and he bites Charles’s shoulder again, more forcefully this time, until he tastes copper. “Can’t you imagine it? All these men, this very moment, jerking themselves off to that sound. They don’t give a shit if anybody sees them doing it. They all want you, and they don’t care who knows. Just reach down into their pants and pull themselves out, hard and leaking ….” 

Erik draws almost all the way out before thrusting in again, harsh enough that Charles actually _yelps_ , one of his hands leaping back to grab at Erik’s thigh. 

“Maybe tomorrow some of them will decide to act out the fantasy,” Erik continues, licking the blood from Charles’s shoulder. “They’ll come to my tent and I’ll let them rape you, every single man in my crew if I must, until their desires are satisfied and your ass is full with the come of a hundred men.”

Charles makes a strange, choked sound and Erik slips his hand around his neck to feel Charles’s throat shifting against his palm when he swallows. 

At some point Charles’s knees give out but Erik fucks him just like that, his body blanketing Charles’s, the two of them moving together atop the furs. Charles has his head turned to one side and Erik can see the flush in his cheeks, the thin sheen of sweat on his skin, tasting of salt when Erik kisses him. His lips are red, the color of pomegranate juice, and it’s too easy to imagine what he might have looked like in Erik’s homeland, growing up bronze under the desert sun, eating grapes and too-ripe figs, the juice dribbling down his chin, Charles’s devilish little half-smile when he’s caught naked in the pools, perspiring in the heavy heat at high noon.

But Erik is happy to have him like this: pale winter child, his hair so dark when he was lying in the snow outside Erik’s tent, eyes bright like ghosts. And Charles is _his_ , every part of him, bound by Erik’s steel and legs spread wide for Erik’s cock, the tiny muscles in his back tensing and relaxing with Erik’s thrusts. Erik wants to pattern them all out, to keep Charles tied down on his bed forever where Erik can study him at his leisure and fuck him at his pleasure. Leave a thousand bruises all over that white skin, the thrall claiming a thrall of his own.

Erik pushes up onto one hand, giving himself the space he needs to start pounding into Charles, harder and faster than ever, Charles crying out with every forward snap of Erik’s hips, even when they lose their rhythm, all the fibers of Erik’s body drawn tight and trembling on the verge of release.

Erik drags Charles up by the hair, until his lips are moving against Charles’s ear, so Charles can’t help but hear him when he growls out: “You’re mine.” _Thrust._ “You belong to me. You will always belong to me. And I get to decide what happens to you.”

When he comes, it’s with his nose buried in the crook of Charles’s neck, dick buried deep in Charles’s body and for a moment that’s all Erik can think about at all: the tight grip of Charles around him as his cock spurts its hot seed into Charles’s ass – not the whoops of the men who had overheard outside, not the way Charles suddenly screams, struggling and writhing beneath Erik’s weight as Erik’s come stings the still-bleeding tear in his hole. Erik keeps him held close until he’s finished, cock jerking its last seed inside of Charles before finally they both go still, sated and boneless and wreathed in the heat of their own sex.

It’s several minutes before Erik’s cock starts to go soft and he has to pull out of Charles’s body. Charles tenses when he does, Erik’s shaft dragging against flesh that is no doubt still sore and raw. Erik stays there for a second, kissing the sweat from between Charles’s shoulder blades, before he finally rolls off to the side. 

Charles doesn’t move, for a while. He just lies where Erik left him, breaths evening out and his face turned away. It’s too dark in the tent to see the copper and gold lights in Charles’s hair; it’s nothing but shadow now, tangled and mussed from Erik’s grip.

He turns, eventually, twisting over to look at Erik. There are no tears tracked down his cheeks. For some reason, Erik finds this surprising.

Charles lifts a hand, slowly, slowly, and touches just the tips of his fingers to the center of Erik’s chest. His nails are stained red from the blood in Erik’s hair. 

“That battle,” Charles whispers – and he is watching his own hand, tracing some strange design on Erik’s skin. “The one where you took so much life….”

A pause. Erik waits, patient, as Charles finishes whatever runes he’d been sketching on bare flesh and presses his palm flat against Erik’s chest instead. Charles looks up, then, and the blue of his eyes is the brightest thing in the room when he speaks, as if it is the most incredible, the most arousing realization, breathless and wondrous -

_“I could feel them dying.”_

Erik’s brows lift. “You mean, with your – ” He taps his own temple, twice.

Charles nods, and his smile is small, private, meant for the two of them and no one else. “Like so many candles, snuffed out one by one. You fought without mercy.” The smile gains a devious edge. “You fucked without mercy, too.”

“Mmm.” Erik reaches to pull Charles closer, to curl an arm beneath him, but his hand meets a wet spot where the fur pelts are sticky and matted together.

Erik frowns and pushes up onto his elbow, glancing down between Charles’s legs. “You ….”

“Yes.”

“ _How?_ ”

“I rubbed myself off against the furs.”

Erik blinks. He hadn’t expected – he hadn’t realized -

Charles slides forward, ignoring the wet spot, to tuck himself against Erik’s body. Erik holds him tight and thinks: _mine_. His own thought echoes back to him a moment later, along with a vague sense of warmth and contentment.

It takes Erik a second to fit the pieces together.

“I thought I told you to stay out of my head!”

Charles makes a vague, dismissive noise. “I was in your head just a while ago, too, but you didn’t seem to mind very much at the time.”

“I was otherwise engaged.”

Charles smirks. “I noticed.”

Erik huffs. “I meant what I said, Charles.”

“Which part? About me staying out of your head, or about how you would never fuck me again?”

Erik can’t answer that. Not now, at least, when his mind is still strung out and hazy from fucking Charles, when he can still smell his own come on Charles’s flesh. Charles’s mouth grazes the base of his neck and Erik lets his eyes fall shut just for a moment, lets Charles lick off the now-dried blood on his skin as if he’s tasting the finest cream.

Erik finds the chain where it’s still clasped on his own wrist, looping it around his fingers and letting his power sink into the metal, slipping from link to link, a long and twisting path down to where the shackle still holds round Charles’s ankle. Better, perhaps, if Charles never does speak. If he keeps his plans held silent to his breast and never breathes one word of them, not to anyone, so that Erik can keep him here like this eternally. So he never has any reason to let him go.

Charles’s tongue flicks one last time at the lobe of Erik’s ear before he pulls back slightly, glancing up to meet Erik’s gaze. 

“Are you really going to pass me around?” he asks, one brow arched, his forefinger tracing Erik’s lower lip.

Ah. Erik, swearing to let the whole crew take Charles in the morning. He had almost forgotten.

“No,” Erik says, only half-scoffing. “What do you think I am?” 

Much as he might have liked the idea of it when it was _his_ cock in Charles’s ass, the reality of having anyone else’s hands on Charles’s naked skin makes him want to heat a sharp knife over the dinner fire and castrate every last one of them.

Charles sighs, pressing his lips together - and Erik could swear he looks almost _disappointed_ to hear it.

Something fierce and grim surges up in Erik’s chest and his hands are between Charles’s legs again, smearing through his own come where it has started leaking out of Charles’s ass. He is struck with the urge to leave some indelible mark on Charles’s body, something that will claim him as Erik’s where anyone could see –

But then Charles’s expression tilts back into a smile … and he’s laughing, wrapping both arms round Erik’s neck and nudging his knee forward, between Erik’s thighs, tangling them up together.

Slowly, with Charles in his arms and Charles’s mouth kissing his, his anger fades again.

\--

22.

Charles is still lying next to him the next morning. Erik doesn’t remember how that happened. But then, who does remember those last few moments before falling asleep, when the first tendrils of a dream begin curling through the mind and everything is warm, heavy, blurred? Whatever chance Erik had to send Charles back to his meager pallet in the corner had been lost in the steady tide of slumber that stole over him too quickly in the wake of his climax.

Still, neither of them comment on it. Erik brings them each a bowl of gruel from the breakfast pot and ignores the knowing stares – both overt and covert – of his men. Charles is sitting up on Erik’s bed when he returns, legs crossed and fully-dressed once more.

“Breakfast?” he asks.

Erik nods and settles down next to him, passing a bowl into Charles’s hands. Charles smiles but pushes it aside.

“I’m not hungry quite yet,” he says. “I’ll eat it later.”

“It will be cold later.”

“Maybe I like it that way.”

“No one likes gruel, no matter how it’s served.” It’s tolerable, though, Erik thinks as he takes a bite of his own. Or perhaps he has simply gotten used to it after months on the road.

Charles just shrugs and watches him eat, those blue eyes tracking the movement of his spoon from bowl to mouth and back again. It should be unnerving, but perhaps, Erik thinks, he has become accustomed to Charles’s eccentricities. Where Erik used to spend his evenings hunched by a campfire, alone and straining to hear the conversations of his crew, now his time is spent almost exclusively in Charles’s company. True, Charles is often silent, but when he does speak it is with strange and magnificent charm.

“I brought something else for you, too,” Erik says when he’s done.

“Oh? And what might that be?”

Erik sets his bowl aside and reaches into his coat, pulling out the small jar. “It’s an herbal salve. We put it on battle wounds, generally, but that’s not its only use.”

Charles sits silent, his expression unchanging.

“Lie down,” Erik says, and only then does Charles move to obey.

Erik undresses Charles himself, sliding the buttons through their loopholes and pulling the trousers down. Charles lets him do it without contest – just watches, wordless, tilting his hips up when necessary to allow Erik to tug his pants below his ass. 

“Roll over.”

Charles does, and, as if he knows what Erik is going to ask next, he tucks his knees under his chest and presents himself, ass-upward, the same position Erik fucked him in last night. 

“You were bleeding,” Erik explains, opening the jar and dabbing his fingers within. “This will help the tear heal.” 

It’s not a kindness. Erik wants Charles’s body to be ready when he decides to fuck him again.

Charles still does not speak, but he does turn his head to the side, watching over a shoulder as Erik spreads his cheeks. 

Charles’s hole is pink and puckered, tight even after taking Erik’s cock, the skin around it as pale and smooth as silk – save for Erik’s come, of course, still dried on the backs of Charles’s thighs and between his legs. But there is no tear, and there is no blood. Not that Erik can see, at least.

Erik presses the pad of his forefinger to Charles’s hole, and ignores the ways his cock twitches in his pants. “Does this hurt?”

Charles shakes his head. “No.”

Erik presses the finger in and presses it to the walls of Charles’s rectum. A tear inside the body is far more dangerous. Erik has seen strong men die like that, slow and in pain, their intestines split with the point of a sword. The wound may seem minor, but once infection sets in, it spells certain death. 

But Charles’s skin is cool, and Erik feels no evidence of a tear inside him, not even when he presses his finger in to the knuckle. His cock is longer than that, of course, but even so ….

“How do you feel?”

Charles’s lips crook upward. “Right now? Violated.”

Erik withdraws his finger and sits back on his heels. “But not sick? No pain, or nausea, or anything like that?”

“I’m fine.” Charles turns over to pull his trousers up again – more likely in pursuit of warmth than modesty.

Which leaves Erik wondering: did he just imagine it? The sight of blood mixed with come. The smell of iron in the air. Could it have been nothing more than a relic of battles just-won? The taste of Christian blood still hot in his mouth and rage still coursing through his veins? He had fucked Charles on the fringe-edge of bloodshed, after all. _Fuck me the way you killed those men_ , Charles and said, and so Erik obeyed. Perhaps it is nothing more than that, than fantasy and violence and desire tangled up tight enough that he can’t pick them apart any longer.

But even that doesn’t account for Charles’s scream, the moment Erik’s come leaked down to his hole.

“I thought – ” Erik begins, but he isn’t sure what to say next. He’s chasing ghosts.

“Thought what?”

Erik frowns, shaking his head. “Nothing. It’s just. For a moment, last night, I thought there was a … tear.”

Charles sits and draws his knees up toward his chest, crossing his arms atop them and setting his chin on his wrists. “A tear? No. Not that I felt. Perhaps your cock isn’t as mighty as you’ve led yourself to believe.”

Erik throws him a disparaging look, but it’s the most he can manage right now. He was drunk on blood as any man might be on wine – that’s all there is to it. There is no mystery left to be solved. Just Wolverine’s warnings still whispering in the back of his mind, hollow and nothing more than the paranoia of an undying man.

“Very well,” Erik says. He screws the cap back onto the salve and buries it deep inside his pack. Tear or no tear, such things still come in handy. “We’ll be ready to leave soon, as soon as the scouts return. We should start taking down camp and packing the horses.”

He stands, collecting their dishes – Charles’s gruel still uneaten – and stacking them to give to a novice for rinsing. Charles moves to stand as well, but the chain around his ankle has looped once; he nearly stumbles, catching himself on a tent rope just in time. 

“I’m fine,” he says when Erik turns to look, holding out a hand to keep Erik from approaching. “I’m still a bit unaccustomed, is all.” He fixes the loop with a kick of his foot and smiles. “See?”

Erik lets out a quick, harsh breath. “No.” And then: “Wait. Stay where you are.” 

He releases the shackle from around Charles’s ankle and uses his power to stretch the metal – just enough to fit, but not so thin that it becomes weak – and closes it instead around Charles’s neck, like a collar. Charles lifts a tentative hand and touches the first link of the chain, lodged just beneath his Adam’s apple. 

“It should improve your navigation,” Erik says. Not to mention, Erik’s ability to get Charles’s pants off in a hurry.

He pauses for a few seconds, half-expecting Charles to raise some objection, but none comes. So he tugs the other end of the chain free from the underground seam of iron and grasps hold of it instead. More of a leash now, he supposes, than a shackle. 

Charles twirls a length of it around his fingers, as if passing assessment. Whatever he thinks, Erik is grateful he manages to keep his mouth shut about it.

“I can’t have you inside while I’m taking things down. Stand out front and wait for me to finish,” Erik says.

“That’s fine. I’m interested in taking a closer look at your crew, anyway.” He glances sidelong at Erik, grinning. “And if you were right about what you said last night, I’m sure they’re eager to take a closer look of their own.”

Erik does his best to ignore the jab. It’s a transparent attempt on Charles’s part, he thinks, to resurrect some of the more possessive instincts Erik had surrendered to in bed. But Erik is not so easily manipulated. If Charles wants him to play that game, he’ll have to try just a bit harder than that.

Still, there is no avoiding the way his stomach clenches when they step outside, Erik pulling Charles along by the leash around his neck, and every eye in camp turning to them. No: not to _them_. Just to Charles. Their interest is palpable – and there’s no mistaking the darker undercurrent of desire that seeps throughout, a subtler poison, dealt by only a few but just as lethal. He doesn’t like the way some of their gazes linger on Charles’s ass or the delicate indent of his waist. 

No doubt they’re thinking about spreading those legs themselves and taking him for their own. _What do we owe this thrall?_ they must be thinking. _He may have power, but not to claim slaves to be his own, not exclusively._ Perhaps they expect Erik will make good on his murmured promises and let them all take their turns with Charles. If anything Erik said last night was true, it is this: they _did_ touch themselves, while Charles moaned and screamed. To them, the line between dream and reality must seem very fine indeed.

Erik latches the free end of Charles’s chain to one of the tent spokes, leaving him to stand in the snow where Erik found him yesterday, gazing out across the camp with curiosity rather than fear. The more naïve he, Erik thinks. He’ll learn soon enough, these are not the gentlefolk he was raised with. Nordmenn take what they want. They do not court it with flowers and lutesong. 

But if there is one thing Erik is slowly starting to learn, it’s that Charles can take care of himself. So he leaves him to it, heading off toward the north end of camp and Wolverine, who is just packing the last of his things onto a supply pony and looks, surprisingly, less sullen than usual. Perhaps the killing has done him a bit of good.

“Fair morning,” Erik says when he’s close enough to be heard, patting Wolverine’s horse on the flank. 

“Fair enough,” Wolverine’s smoking his pipe again, blowing small smoke rings, sending them floating in the wind down southeast. “Once I got to sleep, that is. You and that kid kept the whole fucking camp up half the night long.”

“You shouldn’t complain. Long enough without a woman’s touch, even the coldest man finds himself wanting. And it’s happened here before, men seeking satisfaction with each other – you know that well enough.”

Wolverine glances at him aside and blows out another ring of smoke. “Keep talkin’, Captain, and I’ll start thinkin’ you have something to hide.”

“You’d be wrong.”

“Yeah.” He brings the pipe stem back to his lips, inhales, long and slow. “Maybe you’re right. Every man in this crew knows you flinch from even the curviest wench.” He smirks, and Erik pretends not to notice.

“A pity, then, that I will sire no thrall children for the North to draft into battle.”

“Oh, you will. You’re gifted – or have you already forgotten? Your seed is worth more than that of a hundred of these thick-skulled Nordmenn, thrall or no.” Another smirk. “I wager they’ll have you shackled to some milkmaid and expecting a pair of strapping young twins within a month. What you do with your pretty boys is your own business, but don’t start thinking you’ve escaped your manly duties just ‘cause you’re a slave.”

“I must admit,” Erik says, “when I came down here, I was expecting you to berate me about how dangerous Charles is, _not_ about whether or not I sire children.”

Wolverine shrugs. “Sounds to me like you’re managing that danger just fine. If he’s happy, you’re happy.”

“I don’t fuck him to make him _happy._ ”

“Intent has nothing to do with it. You can’t make someone hate having sex with you if they’re already deadset on enjoying themselves.”

“What,” Erik says, “are you a mind-witch now, too?”

Wolverine laughs, the sound brief and coarse. “Hell no. I just state the obvious. Not my fault if you’re too blind to see it.”

The sound of approaching hoofbeats takes Erik’s attention before he can respond. It’s the scouts returning – earlier than expected, a quiet voice notes in the back of Erik’s mind. They can’t possibly have done a full sweep.

But it is not until the men have drawn closer that Erik starts to suspect why. Their horses are driven near to exhaustion, covered thick with foam, sides heaving and eyes all but rolling in their sockets. If the horses look mad, their riders look even more so.

Every man among them is tense and haggard, the smallest of them gripping onto his horse’s mane like it’s the only thing keeping him astride – but even Arnvid, who has always been unnaturally strong, is pale as milk. And it is Arnvid who dismounts first. The others, Erik is starting to suspect, don’t dare make the attempt; some of them are shaking visibly, and their legs would not support their weight on solid ground.

“What?” Erik is striding out to meet them as soon as Arnvid’s boots hit the snow, one hand gone to his knife almost by instinct. “What happened?”

It unnerves him, that Arnvid has to pause before speaking, his throat bobbing as he struggles to find words. 

“Captain,” he manages at last, and even that is strained. Steady - but a steadiness that balances on the head of a pin, and Arnvid fighting to keep it that way. There is spittle dried at the corners of his mouth - he stinks of sweat, and not the musky smell of exertion. It’s the heavier, sour stench of fear.

“Tell me.”

“We were riding through the mountain pass,” Arnvid says. He has taken on a stiff posture, an attempt at formality. Whatever habits he can cling to, forcing his own fear into something natural and maintainable, as if his heart beats no faster than it does on any other day. “They say there are wild men in those parts, so we kept together. We all saw it. Every one of us is a witness, Captain. We did not mistake our eyes.”

The back of Erik’s throat is gone dry. “What?” Arnvid cannot quite meet his gaze. “What did you see?”

There is a moment – a long, thin silence in which Erik starts to think Arnvid won’t tell him after all. But then the silence breaks.

“Saw valkyrie.”

Behind him, one of his riders has turned his face away.

Whatever assurance Erik had lent himself, that the spectre of weeks past was nothing more than a shade of his own imagining, disintegrates in an instant. In its place is the cold, creeping up from the base of his spine and constricting his lungs so that each breath comes tight and shallow, the back of his throat convulsing slightly, half of a gag. 

“A valkyrie,” he repeats, once he is sure he can. “That is what you think you saw?”

“Not ‘think,’ Captain. We’re certain of it.”

Erik shuts his eyes, and for a split second he sees feathers against his closed lids, the razor-edged flap of rotting raven-wings – he smells sickness and decay. When he saw the valravn, there had been no doubt in his mind, either. He saw, and he knew it for what it was. It was not until much later that he began to doubt himself. These men, faithful to the stories of their youth, will not doubt. They will simply _believe_. And because they believe, they will fear.

“Describe it.”

Arnvid glances back at his men, who look faintly ill at the mere notion. But Erik cannot send them away. He needs them, and their reactions, in order to gauge the truth of Arnvid’s story.

“Go on,” Erik says, when it seems as if Arnvid will not answer.

The man turns round and pats his mare twice on the neck, disregarding her coat of foam. “It came out of nowhere,” he says a moment later. He is not looking at Erik. His gaze is fixed on his horse, on the paleness of his rabbit-fur glove against her copper coat. “But we … expected it, almost. There was this sense, like we all knew something bad was going to happen, but we thought it might be the hour. It was getting late, you see. The mountains are no place to be at night, when you’re already afraid. Every dark corner becomes a threat. Every crevice hiding a swarm of Hel-shadows – ”

“The valkyrie,” Erik reminds him.

“One second, there was nothing there. The next – well, there it stood, as if I’d blinked, only I hadn’t, it just …. It was there. Like what they say in the stories – and not the good ones, you understand. This was no fair maiden come to grant us glory in battle. It was like a spirit. Dark-cloaked, and tall.”

From his mount, one of the men retches, leaning out to cough bile onto the snow.

“We weren’t close enough to see its face. But we knew what it was, right enough. It had those wings – huge, just black skin and bone. Watching us, the whole time. And us, watching it. We didn’t dare look away. No man wants something like that at his back.”

“And then what?” Erik urges. “Did it vanish? Or did you flee, after all?”

Arnvid wets his lips, a quick gesture that does little to soothe the cracked and peeling skin around his mouth. “It lifted an arm, and there was a … _screech_. Like a bird of prey, only it wasn’t like the cry of any hawk or falcon I’ve ever heard. Chilled me right down to the bone.”

Erik doesn’t have to try very hard to remember that sound, or the way it felt as if his very marrow had gone to frost.

“A huge black bird, sweeping down out of the air. A valravn, clear enough. It was half-decomposed already, and even at our distance we could see its ribs, all exposed - ”

The retching boy is vomiting now, loud and violent. Erik feels sick, himself.

“It landed on the thing’s arm and the valkyrie turned to look at it – or I guess it was looking, couldn’t tell, face hidden under that cowl. The bird screeched one more time, and then they were both just … gone.” Arnvid takes in a small breath. “As if they’d never even been there at all.”

Erik’s heart is racing in his chest, and he is grateful for the years that have given him willpower over emotion; his expression remains unchanged. But there’s no pretending this situation is anything but what it is. Arnvid and the others saw valkyrie. Erik saw valkyrie. The Northern gods do not favor them in battle.

“Thank you,” Erik says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. “You’re – dismissed.”

Arnvid nods and swings himself back up onto his saddle, digging his heels into the horse’s flank and driving it back a few feet to grasp the vomiting man’s collar, hoisting him upright again and cuffing him round the ears. The scouts head off toward camp and Erik turns toward Wolverine, who manages to look far less perturbed than Erik would have anticipated.

“You expected this?” Erik demands, folding his arms across his chest.

Wolverine takes one final drag of smoke and dumps the burnt tobacco out onto the soil, tucking the pipe away in his coat pocket. “It’s the wildlands,” he says after a few moments. “And we’re at war. Valkyrie, valravne, Hel-shadows .… I expect we’ll see more and more of their sort, as we ride on.”

No mention of retreat, nor word of surrender. Erik nods, satisfied. “These are dark times,” he says. “And our enemy is darker still.”

Wolverine grins, a wide and manic smile that makes him look more beast than man. “A warrior does not fear the night.”

“But a warrior might fear the things that live in it.” Erik believes in Hel-shadows because he has seen them. They haunt the steps of any soldier who is in the field for too long, feeding off his fear and fatigue. Hel-shadows are the reason the king in the North declared no crew should stay abroad for longer than three months at any one time. The crews that challenge that law are rarely seen again.

“And if he is wise,” Wolverine says, “he will not be so wary of the dark that he forgets what things walk in the light.”

“I am not likely to forget the men who murdered my people,” Erik snaps. 

“You’re naïve if you think the Crusaders are the only danger you face.”

“Wolves, and bears, and dragons – I know what lives out in the forests and mountains. But I hope you aren’t trying to warn me about that boy again. I’m tired of your cryptic mutterings.” Erik turns to face Wolverine, uncrossing his arms to rest one hand on the butt of his ax. “You let me handle the boy. I value your counsel, but he is my prisoner, and I will deal with him as I see fit.”

\--

They ride, again, through the mountain pass and out to where the land spreads flat once more, fields stretching far as the eye can see, dead and empty in winter, ice crunching like glass beneath their feet.

That night, the cold is inescapable, something live and lethal in their bones. Neither fire nor furs gives warmth.

\--

“If I remove this,” Erik says, holding the chain in his hand, steel slithering between his fingers, “Just for tonight … will you try to run?”

Charles is already unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a thin sliver of bare flesh. “No.”

\--

21.

When Erik wakes, Charles is gone.

He ought to feel something – some rush of adrenaline. Fear, given Charles’s power. A sense of loss. But there’s nothing. The cold, perhaps, has numbed his senses. There’s only acknowledgment of the emptiness beside him, and the sleep-dulled conclusion: he can’t have gone far.

Erik dresses in rapid silence. He considers leaving his swords where they lie, but a moment later he’s slinging the scabbards over his shoulders anyway. 

It is still dark when Erik steps out of his tent, though the horizon is lilac-tinged. Dawn. He moves quietly through the camp, side-stepping the pits where the remnants of dinner fires still smolder and smoke. Usually the firesides are littered with the curled-up bodies of men too tired or drunk to find their ways back to their tents, but on this day the camp is empty. The night was bitterly cold, and the men are no doubt sleeping bundled warm in their fur beds. Even so, Erik has the strange sense of being the lone man in an abandoned country. He gives no credence to his own thoughts, the whispered certainty that were he to pull aside the flap of one of these tents, he would find nothing but bones within.

He heads outside camp. There should be guards standing watch at the perimeter, but the landscape is empty, nothing but blue twilight for miles around. 

The fields are barren and covered in ice, and Erik is reminded of the North, the way the glacier did not quite feel like land beneath his feet. His breath freezes on his lips. Strange, how cold this winter has become, and how quickly. Every scholar Erik had known, before the Nordmenn took him, always said it was unnaturally warm. Had been, for hundreds of years. This is the end of a very long summer.

A wind catches him from the east, blowing ice and snow, stinging at his skin – Erik turns from it, lifting a hand to raise his hood, and there he is:

Charles. For a moment Erik is caught by him, by the soot-smudge of his hair against the whitening sky, his skin as pale as frost itself – he’s beautiful, he is the most beautiful thing Erik has ever seen, and Erik could swear that his heart has stopped beating, even if only for a moment. 

It’s only then that he sees the bodies.

There must be two dozen of them – piled up beneath Charles’s feet, naked and rigid in death. All fresh, as if they’d been killed just hours ago, still wet with the blood of their death wounds, eyes staring wide and sightless across the snow. There are valravne, too, perched on exposed ribs, chewing tattered flesh, beaks smeared red. The snow, somehow, mutes their scent. But not entirely. 

Charles has not yet seen him. He is standing there, surrounded by his sea of corpses, gazing at the frozen heap as if – almost as if _disappointed_ , somehow – 

All of Erik’s bones feel hollow, like the marrow has been sucked out, replaced with nothing but the frigid winter air.

[ ](http://imgur.com/S2zPrQS)

“Charles,” he says.

Charles turns, now, lifting his head to the sound of Erik’s voice. Their eyes meet, and Charles’s are glowing blue as the Northern lights, blue like moonstone. Unnatural. Cold.

The very sight of them is enough to send Erik reeling; he nearly stumbles back, breath going still, and as if on reflex he blinks –

Charles is gone. The valkyrie stands in his place, tall and skeletal, cloak darker than any shadow and its teeth bared, leering at him with that wide and mocking death-grin. The thing takes in a rattling breath and in an instant its wings are spread – the valravne at its feet take flight, abandoning their corpses to plunge up into the air, fallen feathers like tar on the snow. 

One of them releases an almighty screech and changes direction in midair, diving toward Erik – too quick to kill – talons dripping with blood and human meat – Erik lifts an arm to cover his face, eyes squeezed shut, and –

\--

When he wakes, Charles is gone.

Erik is out of bed a beat later, throwing off the bear’s fur and pulling on his clothes. He doesn’t bother with a coat. It might be cold as death outside, but Erik doubts the chill will reach him. 

Charles is gone.

His swords and scabbards are where he left them the previous night, still. He lets them lie, and reaches for his knife instead.

It is past dawn when Erik steps out of his tent, the horizon a pale white-gold, sun a distant orb in the far sky. He moves quietly through the camp, side-stepping the pits where the men are rebuilding their fires, boiling water and grain for breakfast. The night was bitterly cold.

The dream echoes: he can’t have gone far.

The fields are as barren as before, white and windswept. But they do not seem as desolate, in the light of day. There are mountains shadowed in the distance, and toward the southwest the silver glimmer of a lake. 

Erik turns in a circle twice, three times. There are no bodies, no flock of valravne come to consume their dead, no grim valkyrie claiming his fate. No Charles, either.

His head is spinning, and Erik feels as if he’s drunk on henbane, the loose ends of reality and unreality spooling out of his grasp. The world is visible for leagues around. There is nowhere for Charles to have run. And yet Erik can still taste the stench of valravne on his tongue, and there’s bile in the back of his throat when he swallows.

He returns to camp, near-stumbling. The thought that Charles might be gone – in his arms one night and vanished by morning – fills him with a sick dread that he doesn’t dare name. 

He walks like a blind man between the fires and the tents, aimless. All he needs – no, not _all_ he needs, but … he needs a place where he can find his thoughts. Piece this together, and return to himself. He has become too invested in that boy, any fool could see it. Best not to get attached. Best not to desire anything, no, not even the touch of a lover or the curve of a smile –

“Erik!”

He turns at the sound of his name, but already something has sparked a quickening in his veins – a familiar voice, an accentless tenor that –

Charles is sitting by one of the firepits, a wooden platter balanced across his knees, chopping carrots for stew. 

Erik stares, his mouth slightly agape. He half-expects Charles’s eyes to be that unnatural blue again – expects to smell the reek of valravne – but no. It was only a dream. Only a dream.

“I thought,” Erik says, once he’s standing at Charles’s side again, “you said you wouldn’t run.”

“This isn’t running,” Charles says. He points his knife at the carrots in his lap. “ _This_ is chopping.”

“I have half a mind to put that chain back around your neck.”

“You could,” Charles says, setting the knife down. He is, as ever, ineffably calm. “If that’s what you want.”

Others are listening. Erik cannot have this conversation here. 

“Come with me,” he orders. 

Charles puts the carrots aside and stands. Erik grasps hold of his upper arm, too tight, for the sake of the crew more than anything else, and pulls him off toward his tent. For once, Charles doesn’t struggle to keep up.

Once they’re inside, Erik presses in close, keeping his grip on Charles just to make sure the boy is paying proper attention – not that he could attend to much else, with their chests touching and Erik’s cock already stirring in his pants. Charles gazes up at him and does not try to pull back. His eyes, Erik thinks, are intoxicating, no matter what color they are.

“I don’t,” Erik says.

“You don’t what?”

His pulse races. Charles is barely even blinking, and Erik cannot look away. 

“I don’t want to keep you chained up like some rabid dog.”

Charles raises his eyebrows along with both his arms, exposing the insides of his wrists to Erik. “Then leave me free,” he says.

“Tell me who you are,” Erik counters.

“I already have.”

“No. Tell me who you _really_ are.” 

Charles smiles – a strange smile, barely more than a turn of the lips, and Erik finds he cannot identify the emotion behind it. He doesn’t speak. He just curls his fingers around Erik’s forearm and squeezes, once, gently.

Erik grits his teeth. “What do you _want?_ Why are you still here? You could have escaped a thousand times over. So why do you stay?”

Charles shifts his grip, slipping his hand under the cuff of Erik’s shirt to touch bare skin. It’s chaste, but Erik still feels a quiet shiver unfurling down his spine. 

“ _Say_ something,” he practically bursts out a second later. He cannot stand these enigmatic silences, these clever wordless smiles.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“The truth. Is that too much to ask?”

Charles’s fingers stroke his arm, soft as if he were touching a child. “I will,” he says. “Very soon, I suspect. I’ll tell you, or you’ll figure it out for yourself, or it will be made clear in some other way. But you won’t have to wait much longer.”

“I don’t want to wait at **all.** I don’t understand the need for this secrecy. What, are you heir to some rich duchy? A prince? A Catholic priest in disguise?”

Charles laughs. “If I am a priest, I’m not a very good one, am I?”

“A good priest? I doubt such a thing even exists.”

Charles lifts up on the balls of his feet and brushes a light kiss to Erik’s cheek, smiling against his skin. “Soon,” he says. “I promise.”

Erik lets Charles’s touch linger a few moments longer before he releases his hold on Charles’s arms, forcing himself to take a step away. “I’m going down to the stream,” he says. “To bathe. You should do the same before breakfast.”

“Why?”

“…What?”

“You won a great victory yesterday,” Charles says. “You still bear the blood of your enemies. You should relish it, not wash it away.”

Erik snorts, shaking his head. “Romantic a notion as that may be, the fact remains: I stink of sweat and dirt. Not to mention, the guts of corpses.”

There it goes again: that dangerous smile, curving round Charles’s lips. He slides a hand up Erik’s chest, trails his fingers along the snaking line of his jugular vein, to touch the corner of his mouth. “I like the way you smell,” he murmurs.

“No prince, then, after all,” Erik says. “I’ve captured a madman.”

“Mad, because I think a warrior should smell like what he is?” Charles gives him a dubious look, but drops his hand all the same. “Very well. Bathe, then, if you feel you must.”

It’s not until Erik is in the water, halfway through shaving the days-old scruff on his jaw, that it occurs to him – properly, with full acknowledgment of it significance, as well as the fact that such sentiments are liable to prove lethal: he likes Charles. He doesn’t want him to leave.

\--

20.

Though they do not dare say such to Erik’s face, he can still tell that there are those among his crew who think he ought to disregard their orders and turn them back North, to familiar seas and safer plains.

If the king were here, perhaps he would order Erik to do just that. The men have seen a valkyrie. Even if the omen did not bode ill, Erik is taunting mutiny by keeping his men out in the field. Doubly so, if they lose sight of the fact that he is a witch and instead think: he is a thrall, nothing more.

Erik makes a point, after that, of using his power as often and as visibly as possible, even for the simplest tasks. That might quell rebellion, at least for a while, but there are darker things to beware.

In the camp, fear is palpable. There is no more rowdy conversation at dinner; the men eat quickly and in silence. They keep the fires burning late into the night, as if flame could hold the night at bay. Erik will not deny that it draws something tight and anxious in his own gut too. That is what makes him the most wary of all: fear spreads like disease, it feeds upon itself and grows stronger because of it. Fear breeds paranoia. Paranoid men do not win battles.

\--

In his dream, he is a child again.

The smell of shit and piss should blot out the stench of burning flesh, but even in the sewers, Erik can smell his mother burning. Even with the noise of battle all around him, he can hear her screaming.

He senses metal: the steel of armor and swords, the iron braziers that light the streets, the pipes that curve and criss-cross beneath the city, the stunning lead enamel dome above the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He senses it all, but he cannot touch it. He wants to bring the world crashing down around the invaders’ heads, but grasping at the metal with his power is like trying to hold water in cupped hands. The moment he thinks he has it, it slips away once more.

They have stripped the gold from the bodies that are piled outside the walls. Later, they will melt down wedding bands and _hamsa_ medallions and prayer beads. They will reform them into crucifixes. They will inlay the gold in the hilts of their swords. 

The fear - that is what stinks the worst. He can smell it on himself. The entire city reeks of it. He runs, he runs half a world away, but the smell never fades. It curls around him when he falls asleep, and he breathes it in when he wakes. It sours the taste of water and rots the food in his mouth. He doesn’t think he will ever escape it.

When he closes his eyes he sees his mother’s face, the flesh burnt and peeling in strips off her skull, exposing blackened bone and bulging bloodshot eyes. She reaches for him with charcoal fingers and he screams and screams and screams and screams –

“Erik!”

That is not his name.

“Erik, you have to wake up.”

“ _Erik._ ”

His throat feels raw.

Someone is there, their grasp digging bruises into his upper arm. A split second later, reality crashes in – and for a moment the hand belongs to his dead mother, and they are in a tent in the middle of Jerusalem, snow falling in the desert, Charles with his red lips eating pomegranate in the sun with the skulls of a thousand burned children piled under his feet.

The dream drifts away. It’s still pitch-black out; Charles is shades of grey, his hand slowly relaxing round Erik’s arm.

“Ssh,” Charles is saying.

At last, at last, Erik’s limbs stop shaking. Charles strokes his skin, small touches that shouldn’t feel as significant as they do, Charles’s gaze holding his in the dark, steady and unblinking. 

“Calm your mind,” Charles says. “You will summon Hel-shadows, with fear like that.”

He’s right, of course, so Erik forces himself to swallow and then nod. If Charles caught the details of Erik’s dream with his magic, he says nothing of it. He just goes silent, and Erik listens to the sound of the wind in the trees, branches rattling, the scurrying of some small animal across the snow. 

After a while, he nudges at Charles’s shoulder with one hand and Charles goes, rolling over onto his other side to let Erik pull him in, fitting them together with his arms locked around Charles’s waist.

Erik’s heart is still pounding from the dream, racing even as he presses his nose into Charles’s hair and breathes in the scent of him, his hand on Charles’s warm hip. He has to fight to ground himself in this, Charles’s body tucked up against his – the slight slope of the back of his neck where Charles’s head tilts forward, the heavy weight of the bear fur that covers them both.

Yet somehow, still, that dream had seemed more real than even this.

It is a long time before he falls asleep again.

\--

A day passes.

Night falls once more.

And, as Charles had promised, the Hel-shadows find them.

\--

19.

Although he still seems disinterested in eating, Erik invites Charles to share his campfire for dinner. The boy is uncommonly silent; he simply sits there across from Erik, poking at the coals with the end of a long stick. But beyond that, he ignores the fire; his attention is fixed not on the light but on the other men in the camp, flitting from face to face, never resting in one spot for long. It takes Erik a while to realize that Charles might simply be uncomfortable speaking freely with Erik around the crew. It doesn’t quite fit with the haughty airs Charles likes to affect, but there are things that would be more surprising.

Once again, Erik turns his metal-sense out and into the metal of shields and weapons and discarded helms. It is no easier than before to make sense of the garbled language echoing back at him. Erik glances toward Charles, half-considering asking him to use his power to tell him what the crew is thinking, but it feels like a cheat. It _is_ a cheat. 

At any rate, he doesn’t need metal or telepathy to know the men are tense. Their fear has only swollen since the report of valkyrie in the mountain pass, and now it lives and breathes among them, humming in the air. 

“They stink of terror,” Wolverine had told Erik in muttered tones earlier that day, as they trudged down the northward road. “Terror and doubt.” 

That was all he would say on the matter, but it was enough for Erik to know - mutiny is almost certainly on their minds. Has been, ever since a group of them came forth demanding retreat and Erik denied them. He called them cowards, to their faces. What happens when they cease to see him as witch, but as an insolent thrall instead?

A strangled scream rips through the air. Erik is torn from his thoughts so quickly that, for a moment, reality leaves him reeling. His sword is already in his hand, summoned by instinct rather than intent. Erik’s feels the shift of metal all around him, as every man in his crew reaches for ax and knife and shield. 

They all crouch there, frozen and silent, waiting to hear something. To see something. Who screamed, it is impossible to tell; looking over the faces of his men Erik sees only wary eyes and thin mouths. He can’t even tell who is missing. 

He glances back around – and there’s Charles, standing, staring out into the darkness at the edge of the clearing – tilting toward it, almost, as if whatever he senses out there has tied a cord to his sternum and ever-so-gently _pulled._ Charles is the only one among them on his feet. The only one whose face does not show fear: only a cold sort of focus, his skin pale like stone in the moonlight.

Erik rises to his feet as well. Slowly, though; who knows what kind of mind Charles feels out in those woods. No sudden movements. No loud noises.

He reaches out to touch Charles’s elbow, tugging at the sleeve of his tunic. “Go back to the tent,” he murmurs.

Charles does not so much as look back round; his frown just deepens slightly, brows knit together as if he is concentrating deeply.

“Charles.”

It’s after a moment’s hesitation that Charles turns toward him. 

“The tent. Go. _Now._ ”

It’s reluctant, but Charles obeys, slipping off into the dark without another word. Erik turns his gaze out toward the woods, to the spot Charles had been watching with such attentiveness just a moment before.

He waits for another scream. None comes. Whoever was caught out there was silenced almost immediately. A swift bite – or sword – to the throat. 

It is pitch black beneath the trees. Erik looks for signs of movement, or the glowing whites of someone’s eyes, but all there is is darkness. Darkness that seems to be growing even darker, he realizes a second later. It is as if someone has drawn a cloak over the moon; all the shadows are deepening – blacker than black, stretching out along the ground, infringing upon the golden light cast by the campfires.

A sudden dread surges in Erik’s chest. “The shadows!” he cries out. “Don’t let them touch you – “

It’s too late. The words have barely left Erik’s mouth when another scream rends the air; the shadows have reached the edge of the camp. Erik yells as one of his men is dragged to the ground – and his scream cut silent when something dark rises up out of the shadow and blankets itself over the man’s body and all at once consumes him entirely. 

Erik doesn’t dare wait to see what the Hel-shadows leave behind. “To the fires!” he orders, drawing his sword – though he doubts it will do any good, not against formless shapes in the night. “Stay in the light. Anything that can be burnt – burn it!”

He kicks his own wooden plate into the fire; sparks spray outward. All around him, men are doing the same with tent spikes and broken oak-shields. And yet still the shadows are encroaching. Two more men are felled near the edge; that’s enough to send all the rest retreating toward the fires, bravery and honor be damned.

They need more fire. Fire spreads quickly, given the right … accelerant. Erik casts his gaze about – there, there, on a rock by the nearest tent, a clay oil lamp. Unlit, but it will serve its purpose all the same. 

Erik grabs it and races out toward the farthest reach of their firelight. How it it, that the flames themselves seem dimmed, the closer the shadows come? And if he is not mistaken, the Hel-shadows are moving faster now, energized by the flesh they have consumed. Drawn, by the reek of fear.

Someone – Wolverine – is yelling his name, but Erik stops just short of the shadows and overturns the lamp, pouring the oil out in a long swath, a line dividing the wood from their tents. Now: little time remains. If the shadows cross the oil before it is lit, there is no hope for any of them. Erik reaches into the nearest fire – he grits his teeth, but somehow he barely feels the pain of his burning flesh – and grasps the largest stick he can. 

The torch is still flaming when he throws it to the ground. The oil catches just in time, fire racing shadow along Erik’s barricade. The shadows _skree_ , as if pained, and shrink back. Shrink, but do not vanish back into the wood. 

“More oil,” Erik rasps out. And then again, louder. “More oil! I want to see this camp ringed by fire!”

And thank g-d, his men obey without question. If but an hour ago they whispered of mutiny, now – well. Now, loyalty might buy them their lives.

At least for a while, Erik thinks, watching the Hel-shadows as they swarm just beyond the firelines, growing darker and stronger with every passing second. The flames might be holding them back for a time, but eventually the oil will be consumed and the fire will die out. Then the shadows will overtake them all.

Erik has seen Hel-shadows only once before – but that was in the North, where every town stocked enough oil and wood to barricade a city for up to eighteen hours. Even longer, in the far North, where the night can last for weeks. Enough fire to keep them safe til the dawn rises again. 

With naught but lamp-oil and campfires, Erik doubts they will survive the hour. 

Erik grasps the end of another flaming branch, pulling it from the fire and hurling it over the lines, into the midst of the shadows. They draw back quickly, and for a moment the torch burns in the middle of a pale grey island. But then the darkness approaches slow and steady. The flame gutters and then flickers out. Shadow slips over the island again like a returning tide.

So this is it, then. This is how he dies: surrounded by his Northern captors, at midnight, in the middle of a foreign wood. Killed by ghosts. 

Erik had hoped for more. A wooden stake through his stomach in the midst of warfare. His enemies, ordering he should be hanged from the neck until dead. And all that, years in the future, when he has far more Crusaders’ tokens stitched to his scabbards and he can go in peace, knowing he has avenged his people.

Not now. Not like this. Not when he has left so much still unfinished.

The flames are burning lower now. Erik can see it, even if the others are still yelling for oil and piling wood into the fire. 

His heart is racing as he steps forward. The shadows shift and move in the dark, hungry as living things. He thinks he can see the shapes of them now, every one of them different. Spindly fingers, a tail, a wide-open mouth. Some of them look almost human, golems crafted out of night instead of earth. Erik wonders what master they serve.

Another step closer. If he dies, it will be with his sword in his hand and metal running hot in his veins. 

The fire flickers. Not much time left now. The Hel-shadows are growing restless; Erik can hear his own breath in his ears, thin and shallow. He closes his mind to everyone else in the camp. Forget the world. There is only this: Erik the Berserker, standing as he faces his death, watching the flames sputter - and then – finally – die.

The shadows ease forward, sliding over the burnt out cinders of the fireline, extending dark tendrils toward the toe of Erik’s boot. Everything around him dims to grey and he feels cold seeping down through his skin, frosting the very marrow of his bones. 

His breath seizes in his lungs.

And he realizes: he knows this. He takes a step back, away from the shadows. He has felt this before.

And somehow he knows what he will see before he even looks; he turns his head slowly, slowly, left.

Valkyrie. 

The same valkyrie as before. Erik can sense it, the same way he can sense the air around him and the smell of burning wood in the fires at his back, the sound of men yelling and a hundred swords being drawn at once. The valkyrie is at his side, close enough that he would not even have to extend his arm to curl his fingers in that black cloak. 

But the creature is not looking at him. Its black eyes are fixed upon the Hel-shadows. In the breath of a second, its wide wings unfold from its back, curving forward: a shade’s shield.

[ ](http://imgur.com/sxfJ7Os)

Erik throws out with his power, seizing swords half-drawn and forcing his men back – all before he even knows why he’s doing it, why he’s protecting this unhallowed _thing_ from beyond the grave.

The valkyrie steps – no, _glides_ forward, into the shadows which swarm like tidewater around the hem of its cloak. It opens its great maw – and only Erik is close enough to see, all those rows of thin teeth like shards of sharpest steel gaping wide. 

The shadows surge up to meet it … and the valkyrie inhales, a horrific rattling sound, sucking the shadow up and into its throat. Its body convulses once as it swallows the Hel-shadow whole.

Some of the men, their swords still frozen from their grips, have taken to throwing stones at the valkyrie. They don’t understand. Not yet. But Erik hears the squealing sound of shadows as they roil on the ground, clambering over each other in their haste to flee back into the dark forest. 

Not that it does them any good. The valkyrie is faster, and hungrier, than they. It leans forward and reaches out with both skeletal hands, scooping the Hel-shadows up like water to pour into its mouth.

Erik stands where he is. He has no choice; it is as if he is locked to the spot, watching the valkyrie as it consumes the Hel-shadows, gulping them down – and Erik isn’t sure how, but he gets a sense of something like _satisfaction_ all but radiating off the valkyrie in waves. It’s enjoying itself. The idea of a creature like that having any kind of feeling at all is astounding to Erik.

The crew are no longer throwing rocks. They know, now. They see: the way the night has retreated, the darkness fading from black to a deep purple, stars reclaiming their places in the sky.

Valkyrie. Goddess of war. Chooser of the slain. And … protector, of the victor.

They were wrong. The valkyrie did not show itself as a harbinger of their death. It was naming them for glory. It - _champions_ them.

The valkyrie swallows the last flailing Hel-shadow; it struggles for a moment at the mouth, wispy black fingers grasping at teeth, but the valkyrie simply tilts its head up and the shadow is sucked down the gullet like all the others before it.

[ ](http://imgur.com/eN3wwLm)

Erik’s lips are parted – and the words to order his men to sheathe their weapons are on the tip of his tongue – but in the end he does not speak them. He simply does it himself. A twist of magic, and every sword is in its scabbard, every ax at its master’s feet.

All around him, the sound of his men falling to their knees before the goddess. He hears whispered lines from the old sagas murmured on their lips. 

Only Erik remains standing. He still cannot move, not even to kneel. He faces the valkyrie as he did that first morning in that empty field so near the place where his people were slain: upright, gazing into its many eyes, more aware of every breath and every beat of his heart than he has ever been in his life.

The valkyrie turns its face toward him. A shiver sparks at his spine, but he does not flinch. 

“Thank you,” he says, a steady voice – loud, so that his men can hear it. “We are in your debt.”

For a moment, silence: and then the valkyrie’s form shifts, the dark cloak melting away and its height shrinking down. That dangerous mouth loses its macabre grin and bones grow flesh, skin pale as ivory – skin perilously soft to the touch. Erik knows. He knows before any of the others, before dark hair and blue eyes and red, red lips give it away. How could he not? It feels as if he has always known.

“A debt,” Charles says, smiling, “that I fully intend to collect.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Erik forces Charles to sleep covered in semen in chapter 26, this would have been considered not only a great dishonor for Charles, but a punishable offense on Erik’s part. Vikings highly valued cleanliness, and forcing a man to become unclean in order to embarrass him was considered reprehensible. Jews and Muslims, such as Erik grew up with, held an even greater stigma toward uncleanliness. Continental Europeans, on the other hand, such as Erik erroneously believed Charles to be, feared bathing because they thought it brought on disease.


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

It sates itself on the life-blood  
of fated men,  
paints red the powers' homes  
with crimson gore.  
Black become the sun's beams  
in the summers that follow,  
weathers all treacherous.

Do you still seek to know? And what?

\- Völuspá 

 

\--

18.

_December 1115, Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire_

“I did not come here to force you into a retreat,” Charles says. 

He is standing on a rock on the edge of the wood, facing the camp. Fifteen minutes ago, Erik might have been concerned; there’s black ice, slick and frozen, beneath Charles’s feet. Fifteen minutes ago, Erik would have been worried that Charles might slip and fall.

The mere thought seems ridiculous, now.

The men watch him in the kind of reverent silence they never lent to Erik when he spoke. But of course, listening to a deity is markedly different than listening to a slave. Erik doesn’t begrudge them the dumb, awestruck looks on their faces – though he can’t help thinking their change in heart is premature. Just a few moments ago, they were terrified of the valkyrie in their midst. Erik isn’t so sure you can trust the words on a goddess’s lips.

“To be honest,” Charles continues, “I did not come here to champion you, either.”

Now _that_ raises a few quiet murmurs among the crew. Even Erik is momentarily surprised – but there’s curiosity racing on its heels a second later. He frowns. He doesn’t like this. It was easier, when Charles was predictable. Or – well. When he was _human_ , at the very least. He refuses to let himself give in to the urge to fall down on his knees and pray. The Norse gods are not _his_ gods, and the G-d that is abandoned him long ago.

“I came here for Erik.”

It’s only belatedly that Erik realizes Charles is looking at him, now – directly at _him_ , as if the rest of the men in the camp do not exist, a tiny smile curving at the corners of his mouth.

Erik narrows his eyes and meets Charles’s smile with a glare. Charles, unfazed, steps down from his boulder with an inhuman grace. The Nordmenn part for him like the red sea, and a moment later Charles is standing before him, touching Erik’s cheek with those false fingers of his, his thumb just grazing Erik’s lower lip. 

“You’re my warrior,” Charles says, softly enough that only those standing within a few feet of them can hear. “I choose you.”

Erik does not pull back. It would look like weakness to flinch from Charles’s touch, especially after he let the whole camp hear him fucking Charles just a few short nights ago. So he holds Charles’s gaze and lets Charles’s fingers slip down to his throat, tracing the curve of his jugular vein. 

“I thought the valkyrie only sought out Nordmenn.” Erik lets his voice carry, violating their privacy just to spite Charles’s attempts to keep it. “I am a Jew. I don’t follow your gods. You should choose someone else.”

“I don’t want someone else,” Charles says, measured, patient. “I want _you._ Erik, you have far more strength and valor than any of these Northern men.” His hand slips lower, to press over Erik’s chest. “You have such a fierce rage inside you. It’s truly remarkable. _You_ are remarkable.”

“Valor?” Erik snorts. “Hardly.”

“You forget,” Charles says, “that I’ve been inside your mind. You are a hard man, but you’re a good one, too. I know. I’ve _seen._ ”

Erik can feel the eyes of the others on them both, watching, their ears straining to listen. They fear Charles. Valkyrie mean death, and the unknown. His men aren’t sure what it means for them, that Charles is only interested in Erik – if this means he’ll abandon them in the foreign wilderness to fend for themselves against the Hel-shadows which have caught their scent, or if he simply plans to slaughter them like useless chattel and steal Erik away. Erik doesn’t plan on being stolen. Not again.

“Tell us what your plan for us is,” Erik demands. The use of the plural pronoun is intentional. “You’ve been among us for some time now, disguised as a human. Why? If you only needed me, you could have taken me at any time. Why do you need us?”

Charles’s smile warms, slightly. “Come, now,” he says, almost teasing. “You know it’s not appropriate for the captain to discuss battle strategy in front of his crew. Not before the plans have been fully arranged, at least. I’d hate to see these fine men getting all confused.”

Erik grits his teeth, so hard his jaw hurts. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s discuss it, then. You and me. And _then_ the crew.”

Charles just squeezes his arm, and Erik hates the way Charles manages to make it seem as if he’s indulging him just by not answering at all, by reaching down for Erik’s hand instead and leading him off toward the tent. Erik follows. There is no other option – Erik’s still reeling from it all, and walking behind Charles to the tent only draws his attention to the slight sway of Charles’s hips: a phenomenon he fiercely tries to ignore. It was one thing to lust after Charles when he was nothing but a pretty witch, but now ….

The tent is dark, but Charles merely has to wave a hand for a flame to bloom on the wick of the closest lamp. It’s jarring, the way Erik, for a moment, expects to see sharp teeth and glittering eyes in the candlelight – but it’s just Charles, in the same form Erik has come to know so well: beautiful but utterly, dissonantly nonthreatening.

“You can’t claim I didn’t try to tell you sooner,” Charles says. “I did. I showed you, but you weren’t willing to believe it.”

“You – “ Erik touches his temple, and Charles nods. 

“I had to wait. I wanted to see you in the field of battle.”

“But you had, already,” Erik argues, frowning. “At Ausburch. You were there. That’s where we _found_ you. I – I _saw_ you, on the road!”

Charles’s lips go crooked. “True. Fair, then – I enjoyed the game of it. And you really were quite insufferable; I didn’t think you deserved to know the truth so easily.”

“And now?”

Charles shrugs one shoulder. “It was time. I was planning to tell you soon enough, but the Hel-shadows attacked, and you were obviously unprepared to defend yourselves against them. It seemed appropriate to reveal myself, under the circumstances.”

“You _ate_ them.”

“Yes, I did. Speaking of – I told you this was going to happen. Hel-shadows feed off of fear, remember? You should have listened to me. You need to get yourself under control.”

“I am under control.”

Charles looks askance at him. “Better control than this. Nightmares every night? What did you think was going to happen?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“On the contrary,” Charles says, “it is _entirely_ my concern. I have a personal investment in you. But before I can hone your many strengths, we really need to deal with your weaknesses.”

“And I get no choice in this, of course. The valkyrie chooses a warrior, and the warrior must oblige.”

“Look,” Charles says sweetly, touching his cheek with two fingers. “He’s learning so quickly.”

Erik doesn’t dare flinch away.

“I mean it, Erik,” Charles says, his hand finally dropping back to his side. “No more nightmares.”

“You do know they aren’t exactly something you can control.”

“Really? Why not?”

“They’re … because you’re _asleep._ Because humans can’t control thoughts like that. That’s your trick, not mine.”

“Can’t you at least _try?_ I’ll help you.”

“Absolutely not. I don’t want that kind of ‘help.’” 

Erik does step away, this time, turning his shoulder to Charles and pacing toward the opposite end of the tent. But there is only so far he can go to get away from the valkyrie, and Charles’s breath is on the back of his neck a scant second later, warm and soft.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Charles says. “I wouldn’t suppress your memories. Not unless you asked me to.”

“You’ll have to teach me; I’m afraid I’m rather unfamiliar with the legend: what exactly is a valkyrie’s promise worth?” Erik bites out.

“It’s worth everything,” Charles says – and if there had been anything teasing left in his tone it’s gone now, replaced by something firm and steady – and Erik can’t help but _feel_ steadied, almost despite himself, when Charles rests a hand on his shoulder. “But I don’t have to remove your memories to help you. Let me … redirect your focus to other things. Happier thoughts, as you sleep. It won’t solve the underlying problem, but it might bandage it for a while.”

“Underlying problem? And what, pray tell, might that be?”

Charles sighs and presses some part of him – his mouth? – to Erik’s shoulder blade. “You think hatred makes you strong,” he says.

“I suppose you disagree, then.”

“Not entirely. Hate has its place. But it can be used against you, as well. You cannot allow it to rule you.”

“You think my hate _rules_ me?”

Charles’s fingers trail down the side of Erik’s arm. It is several long seconds before he responds. When he does, his voice is quiet, like a whisper. “I think you have hated very strongly, for a very long time. That is all.” His touch lingers for a moment at the knob of Erik’s wrist. “And your hatred is not misplaced. But you wear it so visibly…. When anyone can see it, anyone can use it. You have made yourself very easy to manipulate.”

Erik turns, a snide comment already on the tip of his tongue, but Charles shakes his head and shushes him.

“Don’t deny it. I don’t care about your pride. This is important. You need to be paying attention, not letting yourself get defensive.”

Erik presses his lips tight together, and manages to stay silent. 

Charles waits a while, probably to be certain Erik isn’t planning on arguing. And then:

“You must be well-prepared. Our enemy is powerful, and much more deadly than a mere swarm of Hel-shadows. If you are not ready, you will not survive him.”

“Our enemy?” Erik’s brows lift.

“The Shadow King,” Charles says, his voice softening only a fraction, but it’s enough to be noticeable. “The Hel-shadows are his creatures, I suspect. Now that they know I am here, they will not stop hunting us. But they are nothing compared to Him.” Charles’s thumb rubs small circles on the underside of Erik’s wrist. “The Shadow King is powerful; I cannot defeat him on my own.”

“And you think you need me,” Erik concludes.

“Yes.”

“I have my own enemies,” Erik says. “This is your battle. Though I wish you luck with it.”

Charles sighs, lips thinning. He doesn’t quite look irritated, but it’s the closest Erik has ever seen him to actual annoyance. “The Shadow King is everyone’s enemy. He feeds on the hatred that poisons mankind – a powerful mind-witch, like you believed me to be. The Crusades have only made him more powerful. He will overtake the entire earth, if we let him.”

“I’m sorry. Find someone else.”

“There _is_ no one else like you! Don’t you understand that?” Charles is more obviously frustrated now; his thumb has gone still on Erik’s wrist and he just grips him instead, fingers pressing hard enough into Erik’s flesh that he nearly flinches, certain they’ll leave marks. “It has to be you. I _chose **you**_. Nothing else will matter, if the Shadow King is not stopped. The world will cease to exist as you know it.”

Charles pauses then, and Erik finds it difficult to break his gaze; Charles’s eyes are bewitched somehow themselves, tethering him there, drawing him in. 

“He is your enemy as well, Erik. The Shadow King has taken control of Jerusalem, turning all the Crusaders who occupy the city into thralls. He’s stolen their minds and made them His shades.” Charles’s breath is warm on Erik’s neck. “It is a dark curse upon the place your god holds holy. And you should take it back.”

Everything slows down. For a moment – time drags, and Erik can feel every heartbeat as it thuds through his body, a sluggish rhythm – and the sound of everything else has been wiped clean, muted out to grey, annihilated.

“You want,” he says at last, and his own voice sounds strange and slurred to his ears, “me to attack Jerusalem? With an army … of Nordmenn. And you.”

Charles’s thumb is moving again, sliding up the inside of Erik’s forearm, lingering light above the vein at the crook of his elbow. He speaks soft. “I want you to _invade_ Jerusalem. I want you to _take_ Jerusalem. I want you to reclaim it, to throw the gates wide open and destroy its usurper.”

“How?” Erik’s throat feels raw.

“I’ll teach you,” Charles says, still stroking Erik’s skin. “I’ll make sure you’re ready.”

“There are only a hundred men in my crew,” Erik says. “Less, by the time we finish raiding – how can you – ”

“If we need men, we will find them. Let’s not worry about that. The city will be yours. This is the promise I make my warrior, if he will accept it.”

It’s a deal Charles is proposing. The holy city, in exchange for his service in the afterlife. Erik must defeat this Shadow King of his, but if that is what’s necessary, to secure Jerusalem –

He does not trust Charles. He fears him. Not because he fears his fate, but because he does not know this man. He refuses to release his soul to this dead creature while still he is living, but Charles is not asking for a slave. He is asking for a fighter. And that. That, Erik can do.

“I accept.”

\--

17.

That night, Charles is still in Erik’s tent, reclining near the lamp with a book held toward the light, reading. Erik has no idea if he plans to stay. He has no idea what Charles intends to do about anything, anymore - he is no longer Erik’s prisoner. By rights, Erik should be giving up this tent to him. Charles is something more than human, the new and rightful leader of this crew. But Charles has said nothing about Erik leaving … and yet neither has he left, himself, to wander the shadows between the trees or take to the skies, the way Erik imagines a valkyrie might. He never sleeps. Does he plan to sit there all night, reading and watching while Erik tosses and turns?

“You can sleep,” Charles says, as if giving him permission. “This is still your tent, after all.”

Erik sits down on his pile of furs, feeling unavoidably self-conscious, and he is certain Charles is in his mind – as certain of this fact as he is of the clothes on his back and the snow on the ground. What right does Erik have, now, to tell him to get out? What good would it do, to expunge him? At least here, like this, Charles can know what Erik knows, and know what he does before he does it. If he is to be Charles’s champion, he must make certain allowances. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

He only hesitates for a second before he starts stripping off his clothes, folding them in a neat pile at the foot of his bed. Naked, he slips under the layers of fur, back into warmth. Charles watches him over the edge of his book the whole time, not even trying to conceal the line of his gaze. 

“Go ahead,” Charles says after a moment.

“What?”

“You can ask.”

So Charles _is_ in his head, then. Erik keeps his temper steady, and his voice, and says: “I want to see you. In your real form.”

Charles raises a brow – and with it, a hint of a smirk. “As you wish.” Then he’s carefully folding over the corner of his page and closing the book, setting it aside and getting to his feet. 

It happens in the blink of an eye. One second Charles is there, small and human – and then the tent is overtaken by that _creature_ , black wings spread wide, teeth bared – and the air displaced by the valkyrie’s wings has knocked over the lamp, casting the tent into pitch darkness. All Erik can see is the gleam of moonlight reflecting off teeth and splintering to pieces in those dozen black eyes.

Erik forces himself to stay where he is, resisting the natural urge to flinch and reach for his swords. He watches the valkyrie with unblinking eyes, his breath dead in his mouth. 

“Do you like it?” The valkyrie says. Erik has never heard it speak before. It’s voice sounds strange and hollow, like its throat is made of glass.

Erik presses his lips together. “Turn back,” he says.

And there – Charles, again, shades of grey in the darkness. 

“Still afraid?” Charles asks, as casual as if he were inquiring after the weather.

“You look – ”

“Believe me,” Charles says. “I know how I look.” He sits back down where he was, lying back and propped on his elbows, leaning over to set the fallen lamp aright. He strikes the flint only once before the wick catches, light flaring in their tent, for a moment white – before it fades back to flickering amber.

Erik watches as Charles picks up his book again, turning to the page where he left off and unfolding the corner, begins to read.

Erik asks, before he can stop himself: “Aren’t you supposed to be a woman?”

Charles snorts and looks up. “Beg pardon?”

“Valkyrie,” Erik says. “Goddesses of war and battle. They appear to men as beautiful young maidens. …Goddesses. Not gods.”

“Ah,” Charles says. “Well. You’ve seen me in my true form, have you not? Does it seem to have a particular sex to you?”

“Well - ”

“Exactly.” Charles settles down on his back, folding his hands on his stomach and gazing up at the roof of the tent, limbs loose and relaxed. “When we take human form, it can have any sex we like. Generally female, because the warriors we choose as our champions prefer female flesh. But you ….” He tilts his head to the side, eyes bright. “You enjoy men.”

There’s no point denying it, though denial feels reflexive. Even if Erik hadn’t been fucking Charles’s ass and sucking his cock for the past two weeks, Charles has been inside his head. There is very little, Erik suspects, that he does not know.

“That’s not true,” Charles says – and it takes Erik a second to piece together that he’s responding to Erik’s unspoken thoughts, again. “I don’t know how you came to be with these Nordmenn, for example. And that seems like it would be an interesting story. I’d like to hear it.”

Erik shrugs and crosses his arms behind his head, trying to appear relaxed. It’s a challenge, now, in Charles’s presence. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Charles’s true face. He doubts he’ll be able to sleep while Charles is here. But he doubts he can get away with refusing to answer any of Charles’s questions, either. 

So. If Charles wants to hear bedtime stories, Erik will tell them to him. Maybe Charles will leave, after.

It feels like too much to hope.

“I was living in Slesvik at the time,” he says, turning his gaze away from Charles, toward the roof. It’s not much better; he can still sense Charles watching him, can still see him from the corner of his eye. This half-sight lends too many shadows and uncertainties to Charles’s form; Erik has to look back. He has to keep Charles in his line of sight, or else he’ll start seeing things which may or may not be there.

Charles nods, as if cueing him to continue.

“I’d been there for a few years. It took me some time to travel out of Serkland, especially on my own, and even longer to find my way through the Holy Roman Empire. I did not speak their languages at the time – only Arabic and Hebrew, either of which would have gotten me killed.” 

He remembers how confusing it was, at first; there were so many different dialects, and none of them seemed even close to being the same language. But it turned out he had an ear for that sort of thing … which was good, because every time he moved, there was yet another language to learn. Latin, Slavonic, Greek, Hungarian, and then finally the Germanic tongues. 

“I pretended to be mute. It worked surprisingly well. There are any number of craftsmen who would take on a strong boy, even temporarily, just so long as he didn’t backtalk.”

“A very good thing you _didn’t_ speak the language, then,” Charles says, looking amused.

Erik doesn’t smile. “The town I settled in near Slesvik needed a new blacksmith. Their previous one had died of a fever that last winter. I told them I had some skill with metal, and they lent me the smithy for a week to prove myself – which I did. I lived there for three years before the Nordmenn attacked.”

“Raiders?”

Erik nods. “They burned the town. I woke up breathing in smoke. The fumes killed most of the villagers in their bed, but those who were alive fought with whatever they could reach. I had the most at hand, sleeping above my workshop, but.”

Charles nods, urging him to go on.

“I killed seventeen of the Northern invaders. It was obvious what my power was; I didn’t have to touch the metal to wield my tools, and none of their weapons could come near me.” One corner of his mouth quirks up. “Wolverine put it together more quickly than most. He stripped everything metal from his body and attacked me from behind. Knocked me out with a tree branch to the head.”

“Effective,” Charles comments.

Erik just shrugs. “I didn’t wake up until we were already on the boats. And I couldn’t reach my powers. It was ….”

Terrifying. He remembers the way it felt as if his skin was sizzling with the heat of lightning, the bizarre urge to climb the ship mast and throw himself off it, his utter certainty that he would be able to fly. The sense, when he tried to stand, of falling. And the barrenness of the world around him – nothing but the sea stretching out in all directions, and even though he could see the bronze of a man’s knife two arms’ reach away, he could not touch it. Except with his hands. But beneath his fingers the metal felt dead and empty. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat – it was as if someone had scooped out his insides and replaced them with the rolling waves of the ocean.

“They’d drugged me with henbane,” he says. “And they kept me like that, as long as they had to. Until they realized I hated the Southerners even more than they did.”

“And how long did that take?”

“I don’t know. I lost track of time.” 

It had been impossible to hold onto the thread of his thoughts like that; he felt as if he was living inside some dream, spiraling down deeper with every passing day, losing his breath under the crushing weight of it. He couldn’t think straight; it didn’t even occur to him that the Nordmenn might be putting something in his food and drink until after the drug had left his system. He had thought he was going mad.

“They called me Erik,” he said. “After Erik the Red. Because of my hair.”

“Mmm.” Charles makes a noncommittal sound and tilts his head away again, looking up. 

He’s silent now – not reaching for his book, not sleeping, just lying there, unspeaking and unmoving. 

At last, Erik gives in. “What?”

“What?”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Exactly. A bit uncharacteristic for you, don’t you think?”

Charles sighs and looks back to Erik. “I was just thinking. That’s when you started working for the Nordmenn? As their thrall.”

“I was their thrall from the moment I was captured,” Erik says.

Charles shakes his head. “No. You weren’t a thrall until you agreed to be one.”

“I didn’t agree to be a _thrall._ I agreed to be a warlord. I agreed to lead their men into _battle._ To fight, and to buy my freedom with the edge of my sword and ten thousand Crusader heads.”

“You agreed to let them use your magic to further their own goals, yes?”

“Of defeating the Crusaders!”

“And expanding territory, and raiding villages, and pillaging castles, and paving the way for the Northern invaders to settle stolen land.” 

Charles’s pupils are wide in the dim light, almost obscuring his irises entirely. It reminds Erik of his other eyes, the ones he hides in this form.

“What of it?” Erik says at last. “All those goals bring me into the paths of Crusader filth. A valkyrie is the last beast I would expect to criticize the pursuit of merciless warfare.”

“I’m not criticizing warfare. I’m criticizing you for letting yourself become the North’s pawn, even if it is to buy your freedom.”

“You are a creature of the North!”

“The North holds _me_ allegiance. I have no particular loyalty to the region myself. I merely question whether you truly understand your situation as clearly as you think you do.”

“You don’t know me,” Erik snarls. “You know nothing about me.”

“On the contrary,” Charles says, “I think there is no one who knows you better.”

They stare at each other in the dark, and for a moment Erik is almost able to forget Charles is what he is – and the urge to drag Charles out of the tent by his hair and beat him bloody is his greatest desire in the world.

But then he does remember. The urge withers and wilts.

“See?” Charles whispers. His voice is soft, like night. “You think you can control me. But you can’t even control yourself.”

\--

16.

Their orders are to continue north, but now that they have a valkyrie as their leader, the demands of human kings mean little to Erik’s crew. And their valkyrie’s orders are that they travel south.

Charles drew a map in the dirt with a thin stick – a perfect representation of the continent, from as far as the North to the Serkir territories and Jerusalem. 

“We will travel south through Hungary and into the kingdom of Serbia, avoiding the territories of the Holy Roman Empire,” Charles says, tracing the path with the tip of his stick. “The Nordmenn inhabiting the Rus’ states frequently raid along the coast of the Black Sea. I will call to these settlements and they will send crews to meet us at the northern border of Byzantium, where will will steal a fleet of ships. Sailing southeast, we will pass the shores of Egypt, which is ruled by the Fatimid Muslims - the same men whose brothers and cousins were slaughtered in Jerusalem. I will appear to them in a dream as an angel of their Lord. They will find they are inspired to gather their forces and march south to retake the holy city. They will attack from the north, and as the city attempts to defend itself, while our crews circle round to assault from the east.” Charles drops the stick, and shrugs one shoulder. “It will not trick the Shadow King, but some of the men he rules may fall for it.”

“The Fatimids?” Erik asks, dubious. “The city might be theirs by right, but their armies are notoriously weak.”

“Except at the third battle of Ramleh,” Charles says, “when the Seljuk Turks came to their aid, with their swarm of horse archers. We pass by Anatolia on the sea, as well. Perhaps the Turks will again find themselves inclined to lend their brothers aid.”

They are gathered in Erik’s tent – himself, Charles, and the Wolverine – ostensibly to discuss battle plans, though it strikes Erik less as a discussion and more as a lecture from Charles, who appears to have quite quickly made his mind up about how they should progress from here.

Wolverine is smoking his pipe, crouched down on the ground to get a good close look at Charles’s makeshift map. He puffs out a cloud of smoke and tilts his head up, frowning at the both of them.

“This Shadow King character,” he says. “You say he’s a kind of mind-witch. That mean he’s human, then? Not valkyrie, or some god or another?”

“He’s not a god,” Charles says. “But I’m not sure he’s entirely human, either. His natural state is not physical. He must possess the bodies of others to take solid form.”

“Then he’s not human, is he,” Wolverine states. “He’s something else. Like _draugar._ ”

“A vengeful ghost? No. After all, he can be killed,” Charles says. “That’s what’s important.”

“Yeah? How do you know, if you haven’t been able to manage it yet?”

One of Charles’s elegant brows arches. “I am chooser of the slain. It is my business to know who has the capacity to die.”

Wolverine looks unconvinced, but he lets it go. “And you think Erik is the one who can help you prove this capacity?”

“Think? I’m certain of it.”

Wolverine turns to look at Erik, who has been standing here silently the entire time, having already heard a similar explanation from Charles the previous night. This morning he is exhausted; Charles stayed up the whole night long, and Erik had found it impossible to sleep knowing Charles was sitting right behind him, reading that damned book.

“What do you think of all this, Captain?” Wolverine asks him.

“I think the cause is just. The journey is what concerns me. Until now we have been pillaging whatever towns we come across – and while I have nothing against pillaging, it does draw attention. We need to move south as quickly as possible. We can’t afford to be noticed.”

“Leave that to me,” Charles says. 

“How?”

“You have your magic, and I have mine.” Charles’s hand – fucking hell – his hand is on the small of Erik’s back, warm and light. “Raid where you must, for food and supplies. I will keep the humans’ eyes turned away.”

Erik nods and bites his tongue over his desire to tell Charles they don’t need his charity – that his men are good men, strong men, who know how to move stealthily, and to fight when they must. After all, he himself is the one who brought up their need for invisibility. 

Charles’s hand takes somewhat more effort to ignore.

“I’ll ready the men,” Wolverine says, rising to his feet and blotting out the dirt map with the sole of his boot.

He vanishes through the flap of the tent and Charles and Erik are left, briefly, alone. Then a second later Charles is excusing himself and exiting after him. Erik’s back feels cold, where Charles’s hand used to be. 

He follows to the door of the tent and peers out. Charles has caught up with Wolverine and is walking with him, saying something – too far away for Erik to make it out, and he’s never been one for reading lips.

He frowns. Wolverine and Charles don’t know each other – except that Wolverine has warned Erik against Charles repeatedly, calling him dangerous. A threat. Clearly, now that he has not proven to be the kind of threat Wolverine anticipated, Wolverine and Charles are on speaking terms.

He wishes he could know what Charles is saying to him. Wolverine is a naturally suspicious man, but he is all but leaning in toward Charles, his thumbs tucked into his pockets instead of resting on the handle of his ax. 

Later, when he asks Wolverine about it, the man just shrugs and blows his pipe smoke in Erik’s face, says: “I’m older than dirt, Cap. I’ve known a few valkyrie in my day.”

“What? How?”

Wolverine shrugs. “They can’t ever kill me. Guess that makes me interesting. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly. Maybe acquaintances, at the most.”

“Did you know Charles?”

“No. Known plenty just like him, though.”

“Is that why you warned me? Could you … tell, somehow? Did you know what he was?”

“Didn’t know, no,” Wolverine says, shaking his head. “I had my suspicions. At first I thought maybe he was a demon of some kind, but as soon as I thought to suggest to you he might be valkyrie, things started happening. Omens, and the like. He didn’t want me giving away his game just yet. That’s what confirmed it for me.”

Erik glances at Charles, who is wandering the edge of their camp, staring at each of the men he passes by as if he can peel back their skin with his gaze and see into the very core of them. It takes Erik a second to remember that, of course, he can.

“If you’re so familiar with valkyrie, then tell me: what is their game? What do they want?”

Wolverine’s pipe has gone out; he grumbles out a few curses and snags a smoldering twig from the nearest campfire, lighting the mashed angelica root with its flame. 

“Game? No game. As far as I can see, valkyrie are a pretty straightforward kind. They choose in battle who will die and who will live. Occasionally, when they encounter a particularly fierce warrior, they may groom him to join their spirit armies in the afterlife, to fight the frost giants and the unholy dead.”

“Is it necessary for him to stay so … close?” It’s a euphemism, to be sure. Erik understands why Charles might wish to travel with the crew. Why he insists on sharing Erik’s tent and … touching him, on the other hand. It escapes his understanding.

It takes a second for Wolverine to put together exactly what Erik is talking about – but then the pieces fall into place. 

“What?” he says, grinning around the stem of his pipe. “You don’t want to fuck him anymore? Bored already? Or – aw, Captain. Are you _scared_ of him now?”

Erik holds Wolverine’s gaze, his own gone flat and cold. “I only mean to ask, does his goal of turning me into his undead champion require a certain amount of – personal intimacy? He scarcely lets me out of his sight.”

“He’s protective of you,” Wolverine says, clapping Erik on the shoulder. “It’s adorable. And you’ll get used to it. Didn’t see him complaining when he was the one you wouldn’t let out of _your_ sight, did you?”

“That situation was entirely different.”

“Was it?”

“It was.”

“Guess it felt safer, when the chain was around _his_ ankle.” Wolverine snorts out a laugh.

“Stop talking.”

“Why? You’re the one who started this conversation! I’m merely being obliging.”

“I think I have all the information I need. Thank you.” Erik turns away, heading back toward his tent, feeling more acutely aware of the metal of his swords and the knife at his ankle than he has in a long time.

\--

15.

Charles is not reading that night, when they have set up camp some several leagues south of where they had been.

“I finished the book,” he says when Erik asks him about it.

“Was it good?”

“The diary of the Prince-Bishop of Ausburch? That depends on your definition.” But Erik notices he has kept it anyway, tucked into the rucksack Erik has given him as his own.

Erik turns his back to Charles as he starts to strip off his clothes from the day, folding them neatly at the foot of his bed. He is cold as soon as he takes off the foxfur; the nights grow ever longer and ever darker. There is always ice, now, crusting over the surface of Erik’s water as soon as he pours it into a mug. Even ale goes cold within seconds. He will be grateful to climb into the warmth of his bed, even if he must put up with Charles staring at him the whole night through from across the tent.

He has just pulled off the last of his garb when he feels it: warm breath on his neck – and then the slide of fingers along his hipbone, a smaller body pressing against his back. 

“What do you want?” Erik says, refusing to look over his shoulder. 

Charles makes a soft, indeterminate noise – and Erik realizes that’s Charles’s mouth grazing the line of his shoulder blade, even as Charles’s other hand slips down his side, past his waist and hip, venturing toward his thigh.

“I – asked you a question,” Erik hardens his tone and lets his posture go stiff, unwelcoming.

“It was a stupid question,” Charles murmurs, and he curls his hand around Erik’s cock.

Erik’s next breath comes in thin and sharp, hissing between gritted teeth. “What are you doing?”

Charles’s hand pulls a firm stroke down Erik’s flaccid length, twisting his grip at the head the way he must know Erik likes, must have picked out of his mind one of the thousands of times he’s been there, spreading his influence through the corners of Erik’s thoughts like cobweb. 

“You like it,” Charles says.

“I don’t.”

“Yes,” another stroke, and Erik’s cock twitches slightly in Charles’s grasp, “you do.”

Erik shudders and he feels Charles’s mouth widen into a smile against his skin as Charles slowly works Erik’s cock with his hand, coaxing it into arousal. 

“You aren’t human,” Erik says, pretending his hips haven’t just jerked forward, thrusting his dick through the circle of Charles’s fingers. “It’s different now. You’re – I can’t.”

“You don’t want me now?” Charles’s voice is slick as dark water, the movement of his hand smooth and confident, expert in a way no one but a telepath could ever hope to be.

“No.”

“Don’t lie,” Charles says, thumb smoothing over Erik’s slit. “You know I can read your mind. And I know you want this body every bit as much as you did before. The fact that you fear me is not evidence against your desire.”

“ _Stop!_ ”

“Say it again, and actually mean it this time.”

Charles’s fingers tease at Erik’s frenulum, just below his circumcision scar – and Erik’s cock throbs in his hand, his skin heating up beneath Charles’s touch and his thoughts beginning to blur at the edges. 

“Say it again,” Charles whispers.

Erik doesn’t say it again.

Charles releases him and turns Erik around to face him. Charles’s skin is pale in the dark, pale and near-glowing, but even without light Erik can see the curl of his lips, thinks, inexplicably: _danger._ Charles kisses him and Erik gives in easily to the pressure of his mouth and the wet slide of his tongue. 

“On your bed,” Charles says.

Erik obeys. The furs are smooth and thick beneath his bare skin, and he curls fists in the pelts.

Charles stands before him and undresses slowly, unbuttoning his tunic and letting Erik’s gaze trace the thin line of bare skin as it is revealed. His shirt hits the ground and Erik flinches, slightly, on reflex. The sound of wool on dirt was somehow louder than he had anticipated. 

Charles pushes his trousers down and steps out of them; how had Erik not noticed, this whole time, that Charles has been barefoot in the cold? 

Charles waits there for a moment, nude and as unashamed as he had been when Erik found him that day in the tub, the first time. Just letting Erik look at him - at his trim waist and toned thighs, at the flushed head of his cock jutting out from between his legs.

Erik turns his eyes away.

Charles’s hands are cool as they slide along the outsides of Erik’s legs, but his mouth on Erik’s skin as he crawls up the fur bed is anything but. 

Charles straddles Erik’s hips, his hands braced on Erik’s chest. “I’m still the same person I was,” he says, his thumb absently grazing over Erik’s nipple. “I never pretended to be anything else.”

Erik keeps his eyes fixed on the wall of the tent, at the light of a campfire he can see glowing through the canvas.

Charles’s fingers curve beneath his chin and tilt Erik’s head toward him until their eyes meet. “I don’t want you to fear me.”

The way Charles is sitting astride Erik, the underside of his cock is pressed up against Erik’s balls. It’s incredibly distracting.

Erik doesn’t say anything, but it appears Charles wasn’t expecting a response. He simply rolls his hips forward, slowly grinding against Erik’s dick. Erik clenches his eyes shut and rests his hands on Charles’s waist. He doesn’t mean to respond - but respond he does, arching his back into the friction, his cock already throbbing just from the weight of Charles and the closeness of him, the way Charles looks at him like he wants to devour him whole.

Charles keeps his hands on Erik’s chest, using it for leverage to rub himself harder against Erik, their ruddy shafts sliding together. Erik’s nails dig into Charles’s flesh and Charles laughs, leans forward, kisses the thin skin just below Erik’s ear. Erik’s hands tighten on Charles’s waist and he moves to roll them over - but Charles pushes down hard on his shoulder, forces Erik to stay on his back.

“No,” Charles says, a bit breathless. “Let me.”

He wraps his hand around Erik’s dick and squeezes just strong enough to force a moan out of Erik’s throat. Charles shifts forward onto his knees, lifting his ass off Erik’s thighs and guiding the head of Erik’s cock to press against his hole.

Erik’s thoughts are all frantic and tangled, and he wants to tell Charles to stop again as much as he wants to beg him for more - and it occurs to him that Charles hasn’t even been stretched, that he’ll be too tight, Erik won’t be able to penetrate him - but then he feels the slickness of Charles’s skin against the tip of his cock, wet and stretched and ready.

Charles smirks down at him and says: “I prepared myself before you came in.”

And then he’s slowly sliding down Erik’s dick, his ass clenching tight around Erik’s shaft - Charles’s lips have parted, his head tilted back slightly and his eyes drifting shut. Erik can’t think about anything but how Charles feels around his cock - and he wants to fuck up into him hard and fast, to slam himself balls-deep into Charles’s body over and over again until Charles is crying out in ecstasy and pain.

Charles catches the line of Erik’s thoughts and his eyes crack open, bright in the darkness. “I knew you’d come ‘round,” he murmurs as he finally seats himself entirely on Erik’s cock.

Erik means to say something, but whatever it is catches in the back of his throat and he simply moans instead. Charles smiles and curls his fingers around both of Erik’s wrists, guiding them away from his body and pinning Erik’s arms up above his head. 

“Keep them there,” Charles says. 

Erik pulls his hands down almost immediately, seeking the warmth of Charles’s skin, but Charles shakes his head.

“Keep them there,” he says again, “or I’ll stop.”

This time, Erik obeys. 

Charles begins to move - slow rolls of his hips, back arching and undulating, as elegant and easy as if his bones were made of liquid metal. His hands spread out on Erik’s chest, exploring the contours of his stomach, the lines of his ribs, the rippled scar tissue from battles fought and won. 

Erik gives himself permission to look, as well … but it is harder, this time, to focus on the compact beauty of Charles’s form when he keeps imagining long, spindly fingers instead of Charles’s short and wide ones - a macabre grin of a hundred teeth instead of Charles’s red rosebud lips. 

Charles takes in a sharp breath - Erik’s cock must have dragged against that tight bundle of nerves inside him - and grinds his ass down hard on Erik’s lap, his body tightening around Erik in a way that makes Erik, briefly, light-headed.

Charles leaves off attending to Erik’s body and begins to touch himself instead, sliding his hands down his own chest, tweaking his nipples, teeth catching on his lower lip and biting it just as Charles wraps a hand around the base of his own cock.

The mere sight of it is enough to have Erik thrusting up into Charles’s ass. He has to grab onto fistfuls of the fur pelts just to keep his hands where they’ve been put, when all he wants to do is take hold of Charles’s hips and force him to move harder, faster, to lift him bodily up off Erik’s cock and then slam him back down again. 

“Up,” Charles gasps out - and Erik complies in an instant, sitting so their chests are all but pressed together - and after a second’s hesitation he spreads his hands along Charles’s back as Charles moves them together, the backs of Charles’s knuckles rubbing against Erik’s stomach and the head of his cock leaving a trail of slick on Erik’s flesh.

Charles curls an arm around Erik’s neck and bows their foreheads together, Charles’s hair damp with sweat, their breaths mingling between their mouths. Charles holds his gaze, his pupils round and dark. Erik can feel his own pulse through every inch of his skin, and doesn’t doubt Charles can feel it too - can _hear_ it, probably, pounding like a drumbeat, crashing like ocean waves upon the shore.

“You are mine, now,” Charles whispers, and his lips brush against Erik’s as he speaks, his body a constant tide against Erik’s, the motion of his body demanding but fluid. “You will listen to me.”

Erik doesn’t answer; he just closes his eyes and feels Charles tighten the muscles around his hole on Erik’s cock, sending a helpless shiver up Erik’s spine. 

“I will make you into a true warrior,” Charles says. “I will break you and I will build you up stronger again. Give in to me. You are mine.”

Erik tangles a hand in Charles’s hair.

Charles’s thighs are strong around Erik’s, forcing him into Charles’s rhythm, the twist of Charles’s hips. Charles works him until all Erik can think about is the shape of his body and the curve of his mouth - until Erik’s cock is pulsing and swelling in Charles’s hole - until Charles is dragging long scratches down Erik’s back - saying _< <You are mine>>_ as Erik shouts and comes deep inside Charles’s ass, hips still jerking upward through the wetness of it, Charles’s own come streaking Erik’s chest and stomach, one bead landing on Erik’s lower lip and quivering there until Charles at last licks it off.

They lie coiled up there together atop the furs, Erik’s cock slowly softening inside Charles’s ass as Charles gently strokes the line of his jaw with two fingers, smiling, the soft and sated smile of a man who knows he’s won.

\--

14.

The next night, when they stop to build camp, is when Erik notices:

His bronze dagger is missing.

Where it had been buried in the pack slung across one of the horses, now it is nowhere to be found. He’s been stomping around the camp for the better part of the past hour looking for it, dragging his men from where they’re setting up their own tents to check their packs and the packs of those they rode with. A useless endeavor; even Erik’s metal-sense, stretched out far as it will reach, cannot locate it.

“What’s wrong?” Charles asks when Erik finally strides back into their tent, glowering, feeling ready to burn the whole camp to the ground - and Erik hates feeling grateful that Charles has to ask; ever since he gave Charles permission to read his mind a few days ago, Charles has been taking advantage of the privilege every chance he gets.

“My dagger,” Erik says, tearing up his just-laid pallet, tossing aside the furs in case the weapon got caught up underneath them. “It’s missing.”

“Which dagger?”

“The bronze one.”

“Hmm.” Charles frowns and lays the pelts back where they were, sitting cross-legged atop them. “Are you sure you ever _had_ a bronze dagger?”

Erik’s attention snags and he rounds about, his expression already going dark. “There’s been a pattern of my things disappearing lately,” he says. One of his cloaks. A knife sheath. A pair of old boots. All second-hand, but they’d served their purpose for him well enough. “Things of a certain … quality.” 

He doesn’t miss it, the quick upturn to Charles’s lips. “Quality?”

Erik takes a semi-threatening step forward, crossing his arms over his chest. “ _You_ took them.”

Charles nods. “Yes.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“You deserve better than bronze daggers and tattered boots,” Charles says, leaning back on his hands. “You are a warlord, and my champion. You should have the best.”

Erik makes a harsh sound, something between a scoff and a laugh. “You get what you earn, Charles,” he says. “I am a thrall. Only the greatest fighters bear steel. My knife is bronze and my swords are iron - and my power is over metal. That is good enough for my purposes.”

“But not good enough for mine,” Charles says flatly. “You _will_ acquire better materials.”

“What? Are you ordering me around, now?”

Charles’s brows shoot up, and Erik knows well enough to clamp his mouth shut. 

“Keep your iron swords for now, if you must,” he says. “But if I find you better, you will accept it.”

“Why? Why will I accept it?”

Charles tilts his head to the side just slightly, and Erik thinks there is a curious lilt to his mouth that he hasn’t seen there before, something strange, almost like fondness. “Because you are worth more than what you’ve been dealt, my friend,” he says. “It’s my job to make you see it.”

\--

Charles ends up stacking all of Erik’s belongings into two piles in the middle of their tent.

“These,” he says, pointing to the smaller heap, “are acceptable. These you may keep. But these,” he nods to the second pile - one large enough that it takes up nearly the entirety of the inside of the tent, “you will get rid of. They are slaves’ weapons. No better than scrap metal.”

Erik doesn’t point out that these particular blades _are_ , in fact, forged from scrap metal.

“This is nearly all my things!” Erik nudges the larger pile apart with the toe of his boot. Charles has even gone so far as to throw out some of Erik’s shirts, and a copper cooking pot. “You can’t expect me to get rid of all of this. It’s none of your damn business what kind of shirts I wear.”

“I don’t like you in those shirts,” Charles says matter-of-factly. “They’re loose. They don’t present your form in the best possible light.”

“I’m fighting a war, not wooing some Christian princess! What the hell does it matter, how I look while doing it?”

“It matters to me,” Charles says. He steps between the piles on nimble feet, pressing his hands to Erik’s stomach and slowly sliding them upward, toward his chest. “If nothing else, you have taken excellent care of this body. I like seeing it on display.”

Erik slaps Charles’s hands down. “You’re vulgar.”

Charles laughs and lifts up on the balls of his feet, pressing a kiss to Erik’s ear, catching his lobe between his teeth before he murmurs: “No, _vulgar_ is what you did to me last night.”

And then he’s gone, darting out of the tent before Erik can reach to pull him back again. 

“I mean what I said, Erik!” Charles’s voice calls at him from outside the tent. “Get rid of that pile. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

\--

“I notice you and our very own valkyrie have been getting along,” Wolverine says a week later as they cross the border into Hungary. “He still keepin’ you up at night?”

“And I notice your mother never taught you to mind your own business,” Erik says, digging his heels into his stallion’s ribs, spurring him on to a faster pace. 

“It’s my business if the two of you are carrying on all hours of the day or night. A man can’t get a wink of rest around here.”

Erik very nearly manages not to roll his eyes. “Then move your tent to the other side of camp. No one else has complained.”

“No one else has the nerve to.” Wolverine is chewing on a strip of rabbit jerky; he leans over to offer Erik a piece, but Erik waves it away. “Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s a good thing, that you and he have sorted out your differences. Especially given that he seems to have taken your spot as leader of this pack.”

That catches Erik’s attention. “Charles is rather vocally keen on me being the leader of this expedition,” he says. “He’s hardly trying to usurp my position.”

“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t done just that, all the same,” the Wolverine says. “You’re only human, Erik. He’s a god. Goddess? Immortal, at any rate.”

“So are you.”

Wolverine shrugs and tears off another piece of jerky with his teeth. “Sure,” he says, chewing. “But I don’t personally pick and choose who dies in a fight. Your little bedfellow, on the other hand, does.”

“Don’t let him hear you calling him that.”

“What? Calling him your lover? ‘Cause that’s what he is. He seems rather smug about it, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hmm? Nothing in particular. He just,” Wolverine waves his hand in the air vaguely, “you know, has that look about him.”

“Look?”

“Like a snake that just stole himself a whole nest of fresh robin eggs. Self-satisfied.”

Erik almost retorts, but then he’s biting his tongue and shaking his head. This is not a line of conversation he wishes to pursue with his standard bearer. With anyone, for that matter.

“We’re running low on food,” he says, after they’ve gone a few more leagues in silence. “And two horses fell from exhaustion yesterday.”

Wolverine nods. “There’s a township a day’s ride from here,” he says. “We can raid it at nightfall tomorrow.”

Wolverine does not bring up Charles again.

\--

“I brought you something,” Charles says.

He is standing just inside the flap of their tent, a mere silhouette against the campfire light glowing from outside, his hands clasped behind his back.

Erik looks up, setting aside the saltfish he’d been eating. 

How had Erik never noticed before, the way Charles moves so fluidly through the darkness, as if his very skin were knit of shadow? 

Charles kneels down next to him on the bed, his thigh brushing Erik’s ankle. Drawing one hand from behind his back, he presents a slim silver knife balanced across his palm. The handle is carved obsidian. The blade, while well-used (Erik can sense the blood-memory in the metal), has also been well-loved; it has been kept sharp, probably ground against the whetstone every night. It is a simple instrument, not like those ornate profanities of the Church’s knights, although every bit as deadly.

“What is this?” Erik’s voice is soft, barely more than a breath.

“It’s for you.” Charles smiles and extends his hand toward Erik. The firelight catches on the beaten silver, glimmering along the ridge. “Only the truly mighty are gifted silver knives. And you are mighty. You deserve it.”

Erik bites down on the inside of his cheek, forces himself to wait until his pulse slows, until he is balanced again. “This isn’t yours to give,” he says. 

“Of course it is. I found it.”

“Found it in another man’s tent! Put it back, Charles.”

For once, Charles actually looks genuinely displeased. “I got this for you,” he insists. “It’s a gift. It’s mine, and I’m giving it to you. You ought to be grateful.”

“It isn’t _yours._ ” Erik snatches the knife out of Charles’s hand, turning it over in his grasp to get a look at the blade - what parts of it his power hasn’t already familiarized itself with, at least. “This knife belongs to Hoggard the Terrible. He wouldn’t let anyone pry it from his dead hands.”

Charles sits back on his knees, placing his hands on his thighs, and lifts a brow. “If he wants to die for it, he can.”

Erik makes a brief, incredulous noise. “All this, for a blade? Charles, you’re being ridiculous.”

“No,” Charles says, and there’s something colder to his tone now. “No - you simply do not understand the importance of the task we are undertaking. If you are to overcome the Shadow King, you need to be the best. To be the best, you need to _own_ the best. I am valkyrie, and you are mine. If there is something in this camp I want for you, I will take it.”

“Valkyrie don’t have much sense of personal ownership, do they?” Erik says.

Charles shrugs one shoulder lightly. “If they can keep it from me, they can have it.” He places the silver knife in Erik’s hand, closing his fingers around the hilt. “I promised I would give you weapons that befit a valkyrie’s warrior. I keep my promises.”

\--

13.

_January 1116, Kingdom of Hungary_

Erik wakes from the dream with a start, his skin damp with perspiration, feeling as if he is burning from the inside out. 

There is a weight atop him - and it takes a moment for him to place the feel of Charles’s body pressing down upon his, and Charles’s hand insinuated between his legs, idly stroking his half-hardened cock.

“Shh,” Charles is murmuring, his lips wet on Erik’s neck, his hand squeezing just below the head of Erik’s dick. “You had a bad dream, is all. I’m here now.”

Erik’s chest heaves, struggling to suck in enough air to counter his dizziness. He feels breathless, like he’s been running for leagues and leagues. Charles’s skin is cool. And as tempted as Erik is to push him away, to reclaim what he can of his own body’s space, he can’t quite bring himself to draw away from the chill of Charles’s flesh. It … comforts him.

Charles’s fingers slip back to caress the seam of Erik’s balls and Charles tilts his head to the side, resting it on Erik’s chest, just below the base of his throat. “You survived,” he says, free hand tracing small circles around Erik’s right nipple, the nub gone hard in the winter air. “Against all odds. You survived.”

Erik closes his eyes, inhales deep through his nose. “Yes,” he says. “But at the cost of how many lives?”

“Death does not make those kinds of bargains,” Charles says. “No one paid with their lives for you to live. You were chosen to survive because you were strong, and you had power inside you.”

“But you could not save the others? You couldn’t spare them? An entire _city_ of innocent people - !”

Charles lifts his head slightly, enough to meet Erik’s gaze when he opens his eyes. “What happened at Jerusalem was not a battle,” he says. “Valkyrie did not choose the slain that day. That was the act of the Norn - of fate. A whole city … yes. A whole city was fated to die, and you were fated to live. You cannot change destiny any more than I can.”

“And this Shadow King?” Erik says. “Is it my _destiny_ to fight him?”

Charles shrugs. “I don’t know. The Fates were silent on the matter, when I asked. They said knowledge of these events were tangled with the threads of my own destiny. I could not be allowed to know the outcome.”

Erik snorts, rolling his eyes. Gods, he is starting to learn, are all startlingly alike.

Charles releases Erik’s cock to settle both hands on his chest, lacing his fingers together just below Erik’s collarbones, his chin resting across his knuckles. “Do you want me to tell you a story?” he asks. “It might distract you. From the dream.”

Erik shifts slightly below Charles’s weight, wrapping an arm around his waist, holding him there. “All right,” he says. “A story.”

Charles chews his lower lip for a moment, as if considering options, then finally nods and begins. “So,” he says. “Once there was a brave warrior named Ulf. He lived on the plains of Danmark, in a small thatched hut with his wife and three boisterous young sons. He was in his fifty-sixth year when the king called all able men in the region to war. While Ulf was old, he was still limber, so he kissed his wife and children farewell and set out on the ships to England.”

Erik lets his eyes drift shut again, the soft cadence of Charles’s voice slowly lulling him into a light doze, the weight of Charles’s body as sweet as the ties of sleep.

“But when they reached those shores, his crew was met with the savage folk of the island. They hid among the rocks, bearing spears and bows, skin stained blue with some secret foreign ink. The Nordmenn fought bravely with ax and shield, but they were no match for the wild warfare of the barbaric English natives.”

Erik has heard stories like this before - brave men who only just managed to conquer the untamed creatures of the English isle. Tales of the ghostly creatures which roam their mountains, shades that have no names - 

Charles continues. “Ulf met his death at the end of a spear that split his gut as easily as if his flesh were made of cloth. The blade sliced open his innards and they bled out underneath his skin, turning it blue and mottled, the contents of his stomach slowly eating away at him - burning through his organs like a slow-smoldering fire. It took twenty hours for Ulf to die. Twenty hours spitting blood and bile into the dirt, his blood poisoned by his body’s own venom. After he had been dead two days, the worms of the earth - ”

“No,” Erik says, his stomach turning. He grasps Charles’s shoulders with both hands, squeezing hard. “A different story. Please.”

“You don’t like my - ”

“I like your stories. Just tell a different one. If you will.”

“Very well.” Charles falls silent again for a few minutes, his fingers taking back up the task of tracing their small circles on Erik’s bare skin. Then: “Once there was a man who had been haunted by Hel-shadows his whole life. He was born afraid, and the Hel-shadows tasted his fear in the night, and craved more. No matter where he ran, he could not escape them. He was forced to live alone in the middle of the woods, because living among others put those others at risk. Every night at duskfall he would light a ring of fire around his hut and huddle inside with his wife and children, holding them close while the Hel-shadows howled around the perimeter, fighting to get in. Every night they fought harder, and every night the man’s fire-line drew closer and closer, tighter around his house.”

Maybe it’s just in Erik’s head, or maybe Charles is subtly manipulating his perception of things to enhance the effect of the story, but it seems to him as if the night has gotten darker all around them, deeper and heavier.

“The Hel-shadows would never stop haunting him. He knew this, and every day he knew it with more certainty. His wife cried in the night, begging him to stop. She claimed he was seeing things, movement in the shadows that was not there. His children feared him, because they could not understand the danger their father saw, the threat he so valiantly protected them against. But the man knew what lurked out there in the dark, because it had been chasing his footsteps his entire life, and he knew what must be done. The Hel-shadows could not be escaped forever. Even now they grew stronger, and soon they would pass his fire-lines and swarm into his house, devouring the man and his family. A painful and grotesque way to die.”

Charles’s eyes hold Erik’s, steady and unblinking, his pupils like pools of blackest ink. Erik’s heart races too fast inside his chest.

“So when the night was longest, at the eve of the winter solstice, he gathered his family into his hut. He lit no fire-line. His wife wept tears of joy. Finally, she whispered, finally the Hel-shadows had stopped haunting them. Finally she would see her husband laugh again. The man kissed his wife, and hugged his two children. The Hel-shadows, he told them, were gone. They would follow them no more.” Charles pauses, even his breath gone still and silent, his hands cold upon Erik’s chest. “He took his buckets and pitchers of oil, and poured them around the house, poured them over the heads of his wife, his sons, and finally himself. He struck the flint. They say the fire from their bodies burned so high it lit up the horizon, bright as an aurora, and their screams still echo through those mountains.”

Charles falls silent and Erik stares at him, Charles smiling, patiently waiting for Erik to give him some note of approval, no doubt.

“That …” Erik begins. He shakes his head. “Charles. That was worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stories about the most disgusting way you’ve ever seen a man killed in battle? Tales of a madman who burned his family alive? If you want to calm my nightmares, that won’t help!”

“Really? Oh. I thought it might distract you.”

“It didn’t.”

Charles unclasps his hands and lays his head down on Erik’s chest instead, his cheek pressed against Erik’s skin. “Very well. I’ll try again. Once: I saw a human child.”

Erik waits until at least a minute has passed with nothing else said before he urges Charles on. “And?”

“And what? That was it. I saw a human child. It was very small.”

Erik lets out a long, slow breath. “That was certainly anticlimactic.”

“I thought that was what you wanted. Something short and simple.” 

Erik closes his eyes again, his hand moving slow against Charles’s back. “You saw a human child. All right.”

Charles makes a soft, vague noise and burrows in closer, wrapping his arms around Erik’s middle. “Do you want children?” he asks.

It seems a strange question, coming from a valkyrie. 

“I used to think I might,” Erik says. “When I was very young.” Before his life became about fighting the killers who massacred his people. 

“Not anymore, though?”

Erik just lifts one shoulder and doesn’t answer.

“I wouldn’t,” Charles says, with a note of decisiveness, his words muffled where he buries his face in the crook of Erik’s neck. “They take too long to grow up.”

\--

12.

They raid at nightfall. 

From the woods outside the town, Erik reaches out with his power and melts the sentries’ swords in their hands, and crushes their bronze steeple bells before they can ring out the alarm. They hack their way through the town’s makeshift defensive lines, these merchants’ sons with their dull-edged swords and old men whose glory days were too long ago.

Erik sends Wolverine and Arnvid to claim the horses in the stables, leaving the rest of the men to carve a path to the center of town and the storage sheds. Some of the townsfolk are shooting iron-tipped arrows down from above; Erik doesn’t have to spare much energy to ensure their aim is always just a few inches shy of his head. 

He heads up the stone steps, taking them two at a time, following his sense of the crumpled steeple bells to the town church. It is deserted, even the priests having fled, to hide or to fight. Erik’s footfalls echo off the high ceiling. Somehow, in the empty chapel, the echo of his steps is far louder than that of the battle outside. He thinks: _even G-d has left this place._

But he has come here for a purpose. They all have things they need from this town, after all. It’s … a favor, Erik tells himself. A favor, and nothing more. A small repayment of debt owed.

A small hallway leads off from the chapel, lined with torch brackets, the flames burnt out - except one. Erik can see it, a tiny flight flickering some several yards ahead. He trails his fingers along the wall and walks toward it. His knowledge of churches is mediocre at best, but the scouts said this one has a monastery, and if Erik’s instinct is right - he takes the last lit torch from the wall and holds it aloft - the entrance should be here somewhere, adjacent to the main building.

He pushes through a small wooden door and steps out into a plain, cold room. The monks have abandoned it already, the cowards. The monks of the greater cities would have died protecting their books, but these men fled as soon as they heard there were Nordmenn at their gates. Perhaps they took the most precious books with them. Erik has no way of knowing. He was not entirely truthful, before, with Charles, when he said he could not read. He can - but only Arabic or Hebrew. The books here are written with scripts that are foreign to him. He has no way of knowing if the tomes and scrolls beneath his hands are copies of the Christian Bible or inventories of livestock.

He flips open one of the covers, peering down at the delicate illustrations the monks have painted into the margins of the pages. Somehow, even in torchlight, and even with his bad eyes, he can make them out. A man on a horse, rearing back. A line of tiny brown monks, all clutching scrolls to their chests.

Erik shuts the book and tucks it away, buttoning his coat tight around it, securing the book against his chest. The battle is winding down; he can sense it in the slowing motions of the metal weapons, axes sheathed across spines as his men set off to raid what they can. 

Erik heads out of the monastery, back down the narrow stone hall toward the chapel. He senses the sword before he sees it - a lone guardsman creeping between the pews with his hilt grasped in both hands, jumping at the slightest sound. Tasked, no doubt, with finding the gold Eucharist chalices and hiding them from the pagan invaders. The man lurches about when Erik steps into the church, raising his sword aloft, but he doesn’t have time to charge before Erik has sent his silver knife flying across the room, slitting the man’s neck, then snapping back into Erik’s hand a second later. The guardsman stumbles forward, blood spurting out of his severed artery in rapid pulses, then falls, twitching, face-forward in the pool of his own gore.

Erik wipes the knife clean on the hem of his tunic. He’s just starting to head down the aisle when the front door swings open once more. Erik doesn’t recognize the man at first - he’s nothing but a darkened silhouette against the fires burning outside - and then the door shuts, and Erik sees him for who he is.

“You stole my knife,” Hoggard the Terrible says, lifting one finger to point at Erik, at the silver blade in his hand. “That’s _my_ knife you’re holding.”

Erik says nothing; he just takes a slow step to the side, toward the aisle. Toward Hoggard, whose ax is nowhere near. Just a wooden shield and a club. He came here for a reason. He followed Erik here, knowing full well what kind of magic Erik could wield, and planning for it. Erik had told Charles right; Hoggard would want to kill him for this.

“Give it back,” Hoggard growls. “Give it back to me, and maybe I’ll let you live.”

Another side-step. Hoggard is moving forward as well; he’s a heavy man, broad and thick. Erik has seen him crush a man’s throat with his bare hand before. 

“You are a Nordman, are you not?” Erik says. 

A shadow is cast across Hoggard’s face, and Erik cannot read his expression. “More than I can say for you, thrall.”

“A Nordman earns what he owns. Your gold is stolen from the cities we raze and plunder. The very food you eat was paid for with blood.” Erik lifts the knife, tilting the blade toward Hoggard so he can see Erik’s torch light glinting off the silver. “If you could not keep your blade, you do not deserve it.”

Hoggard makes a low, dangerous sound in the back of his throat. “I will take it back, slave. I may have to burn it afterward to get the stain of your filthy Serk hands off it, but I will have it. Along with your head on a spike.”

“By all means,” Erik says, smiling slightly as the blade lifts out of his hand, floating in midair at ear-height. “Do what you think you must.”

He knows what will happen already - how Hoggard will lunge forward - that he will anticipate Erik’s power and dodge right to avoid the knife, cutting under with his shield, aiming for the bundle of nerves at the junction of Erik’s ribcage. But too late; the knife will move with him, slicing up under his sternum and splitting open his heart.

Hoggard begins to move, but then he stops abruptly, gagging - and that’s when Erik sees it, the thin black skewer protruding from his mouth. All of Hoggard’s limbs go loose at once, like a doll whose strings have been cut. He is dead before Erik can see the light go out of his eyes.

The spike is yanked out of Hoggard’s skull and he collapses to the ground. Behind him, the valkyrie lifts its hand slowly, examining the blood that drips from one long, sharp forefinger with a dozen glittering eyes.

Erik stumbles back. It’s a reflex, he tells himself a split second later. Because no matter what he knows about Charles now, when he sees that skeletal figure all he can think about is death. 

There’s a valravn on its shoulder, half-rotted, its feathers slick with something that may be blood or tar or both. The bird nips at the valkyrie’s cowl with its bony beak and the valkyrie turns its grinning head to the side, lets the raven scrape its beak across that row of long white teeth.

“I didn’t need your help,” Erik snaps once he has his voice back. “I could have killed him easily.”

“Yes,” the valkyrie says. “But I was the one who took the knife you said he would die for. It was my price to pay. Whether you needed my help or not, I wanted to give it. The knife is yours.”

The valkyrie strokes its branch-like fingers along the rotting raven’s feathers and turns away, as if to step back out through the church door and into the battle. And then, in the blink of an eye, it is gone.

\--

When the battle is over, and dawn is creeping over the horizon, Erik returns to his tent. Charles laughs when Erik gives him the book, throwing his arms around Erik’s neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek. For a moment, Erik’s spine stiffens - and then he’s relaxing into Charles’s embrace, his hands settling on Charles’s narrow hips.

“Finally,” Charles says, drawing back a moment later. “Entertaining as the Prince-Bishop’s diary was, I was desperate for novelty.”

“I thought you said the diary was all about the Prince-Bishop’s hygiene rituals.”

“Oh yes. At first, anyway. It only got interesting later on, when he began to use it to detail his increasingly depraved sexual fantasies involving all the comely girl-children of Ausburch.”

“That’s appalling.”

“Yes,” Charles says. He holds the new book in his arms, fingers toying with the spine. “He was a broken man. And I’m glad you killed him.”

\--

11.

What wakes him is the sudden sensation of fullness, something slowly stretching him from the inside out. His cock is hard and heavy, resting on his stomach, relic of a dream, phantom memories of soft lips between his thighs and familiar hands sliding up his chest ….

No, not a dream - Erik startles awake and Charles presses his free hand against his mouth before he can shout, whispering _< <Hush, you’ll wake the others>>_ inside Erik’s head as his other hand works its fingers inside Erik’s ass.

Erik squirms, fighting to push Charles away, but Charles is far stronger than his short form gives him credit for; he pins Erik down and spreads his fingers in Erik’s hole, drawing that puckered flesh out tense. 

_< < **What** are you doing? >>_ Erik hurls the thought toward Charles with as much force as he can muster. Better than speaking out loud, anyway; Charles has three slick fingers inside him now, and it _stings_ , the kind of pain and pressure Erik has never been familiar with. 

Charles thrusts his fingers into Erik once, twice, then curls them up toward Erik’s stomach and presses them against that sensitive flesh deep inside. Erik yelps and his hips jerk up toward Charles despite himself, toes curling from the sudden and unexpected burst of pleasure. 

“Calm your mind,” Charles whispers, licking the inner curve of Erik’s ear.

He pulls his fingers out of Erik’s body with an odd wet sound, and then he’s hitching Erik’s leg up past Erik’s head and there’s an unbearable pressure pushing against Erik’s hole, hot and searing pain, like having his ass slowly torn apart as Charles pushes the fat head of his own hard cock past muscles that clench tight in self-defense.

He bites his lip over his desire to tell Charles to stop. He doesn’t think it would make a difference. And Charles is already halfway in, his dick not as long as Erik’s but just as thick, and it feels ten times thicker when it’s pushing its way into Erik’s virgin ass, splitting him apart - and when Charles pulls his hand away from Erik’s mouth to grasp onto his other thigh instead Erik has to cover his face with one arm, biting down hard on the sensitive skin near his elbow, eyes clenched shut and leaking tears as Charles finally pushes forward those last few inches and buries himself balls-deep in Erik’s body.

Charles is breathing hard - shallow little gasps, warm air gusting out against Erik’s neck as Charles just holds him there for a moment, spread and pinned like a bird with an arrow through its heart. He’s lost his erection; he was mostly hard from the dream, anyway, and as much as he might appreciate a good ass-fucking, his has never been the ass in question.

It hurts even worse when Charles begins to move: just a slow rock of his hips back and forth at first, grinding himself down against Erik’s hips. And then _more_ , longer, deeper, Erik’s ass clinging to the shaft of Charles’s cock as if desperate to keep it in place and Charles’s grip tightening on his thighs, certain to leave small fingerprint bruises on Erik’s skin, Charles’s silent method of declaring ownership, even if it’s someplace no one but Erik will see.

The pain dulls with time, although it never really goes away. But it fades enough that Erik can start to focus on other things - like the way it actually _feels_ , Charles’s cock dragging in and out of his hole - and the way Charles’s motions are fluid, like water, his spine arching and flexing as he drives himself in and out of Erik. Charles fucks slow but he kisses Erik like he wants to leave Erik’s lips bloody, biting and licking and sucking, pushing so hard that sometimes Erik can’t breathe, can’t move.

He wants to make Charles feel good, but all he can think about is how exposed he is like this, with his cock dangling soft and limp between his legs and Charles fucking up into his ass, touching him like Erik’s body is a familiar work of art. The idea of trying to shift his body in rhythm with Charles’s repulses him - he’s safe, like this, lying here utterly still, letting Charles thrust into him and hold him down. If he moves, it might hurt. It might make it worse. And he’s close - so close - to being fine, to just giving in and giving over, to that ache in his ass becoming something he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could enjoy.

So he simply lies there, half-holding his breath and staring at Charles’s face because if he’s going to look at anything it’s going to be at Charles, who is fucking him, who chose _him_ as his champion. Charles, whom Erik now finds impossible to think of as “boy” the way he used to. Whose lips and whose smile are pleasures that would kill a thousand men. 

He can feel it when Charles starts to get near the edge; his cock begins to swell slightly in Erik’s body, to twitch on every other jerking thrust, Charles’s nails digging small crescents into Erik’s flesh. Erik reaches up and curls his fingers in Charles’s hair. 

“Do it,” he says. 

Whether he reads Erik’s mind or not, there is no doubt Charles knows exactly what he means. Charles is coming a second later, gasping out Erik’s name and pressing a dozen kisses along his chest, dick pulsing in Erik’s ass, filling him up with the heat of his seed.

Charles stays like that for a while, curled around Erik with his cock warm and slippery in Erik’s hole, until Erik’s legs start to cramp and Charles lets go of his thighs, sliding out of him and pushing himself up on his forearms to kiss Erik on the mouth. 

Erik lies there, his asshole still sore and throbbing, arms curled loosely around Charles’s waist, measuring out his breaths, certain that the deep slumber of only half an hour before is now hopelessly out of reach. Charles threads his fingers through Erik’s hair, drawing it out of his face with a gentleness that seems strange for a creature of Charles’s ilk.

“What time is it?” Erik asks at last.

Charles’s irises are pale, almost clear in the moonlight. “Four hours until dawn.” He is silent for a few moments, gaze lingering on Erik’s face and his touch trailing not far behind. His thumb skims Erik’s lower lip, and at last, he murmurs - “You were sleeping so peacefully.”

\--

Charles is still in his arms when Erik wakes for the second time. It takes him a few seconds to realize he has slept past dawn - that for the first time in as long as he can remember, he has dreamt without waking with the taste of ash in his mouth. 

Charles meets his eyes, his cheek still resting on Erik’s chest and their legs tangled up together, smiling slightly. “You did well,” he says. “I knew you would.”

“How?”

Charles tilts his head inward, kisses the center of Erik’s sternum. “You gave yourself over to me. You made yourself vulnerable and relinquished control to someone else.” He shrugs. “...Or maybe it’s just a coincidence, and you would have slept sound either way.” 

Charles pushes himself up to straddle Erik’s hips and it’s then that Erik sees them - what look like black tattoos inked into the surface of Charles’s skin, thin black lines drawn in strange spiky runes on his arms, his chest, his thighs. Even his fingertips look as if they’ve been stained, dipped in ink. Against his skin, which somehow seems even paler before, the tattoos are very striking indeed.

“Charles,” Erik says, slowly lifting his hands and touching the edge of one angular design. It twitches at his touch, the line wriggling away from his finger as if live. “What … are these?”

“Don’t worry about those,” Charles says, placing his hand over Erik’s and slowly guiding it down, away, lacing their fingers together atop his thigh. 

“But what _are_ they?”

“Magic,” Charles says. “A more ancient sort than you’re used to. They are runes drawn with my own blood.”

“Your - ”

“They will keep the Hel-shadows away,” Charles says. “At least for a time. I cannot guarantee they’ll be enough, once we are within the Shadow King’s territory.”

“But,” Erik says, and his tongue feels strange in his own mouth, thick and dry. “They’re _black._ ”

Charles lifts an eyebrow and leans over, tilting his wrist upward and biting down on the soft flesh of its underside. When he pulls back Erik can see blood beading up where his teeth broke the skin - blood black as the night ocean.

“A little-known trick,” Charles says. “You can always spot a valkyrie, if you know how. The hard part is getting one to let you bleed them.”

“You let me bleed you, though. When I fucked you, the first time.”

Charles licks the blood from his wrist and smiles. “Well, we compensate, of course. If I were walking around grey-skinned, you might have noticed something was off.”

“How do you compensate? With your … other power?” Erik taps his own temple, to show what he means.

“No. I told you I wouldn’t change your mind about anything without your permission, didn’t I? This falls under that category, I think. This is just an illusion. The same kind of illusion the faeries use to stay invisible, and that I use to look like _this_ ,” he gestures down at his human body, “at all.”

“An illusion I appreciate,” Erik says, pressing his hand to Charles’s stomach. 

It takes him a second to realize Charles has gone still, with his gaze fixed on Erik’s hand - even his expression frozen in a smile that no longer seems genuine. For the first time, it occurs to Erik that Charles might not see his true form the way the rest of the world does. It feels discordant, that Charles might make full use of the valkyrie’s eerie appearance when it suits him to do so but then be offended when that same appearance makes Erik uneasy.

Or maybe it’s just Erik. Maybe he just wants Erik to look upon his body for what it really is, and find it beautiful.

Well, Erik thinks, that’s unfortunate. There might be nothing Charles can do about the way he looks beneath this illusion, but neither is there anything Erik can do about how he reacts to it. The mere memory of those bared teeth makes him feel faintly nauseated.

Charles covers his momentary lapse quickly enough, his smile widening as he tilts in to brush a kiss to Erik’s cheek. “I do what I can,” he says blithely, and then he’s picking himself up and heading to the pack Erik had filled with raided clothes in Charles’s size, beginning to get dressed.

\--

10.

_January 1116, Kingdom of Serbia_

It takes five days for them to cut through the western Hungarian lands. Wolverine keeps a careful eye on the maps; too far west, and they will meet the Holy Roman Empire. Too far southeast, and they’ll be in Byzantium long before they intend to be. At least the weather grows milder as they travel farther south. Slowly, they watch the snows thaw - and then melt altogether, leaving wet grass beneath their feet, the rivers widening, even if the wind is sometimes still strong and bitter enough to chill a man to the bone.

Erik no longer sits alone at a fire on the fringe of the camp. Charles will not allow it, though it takes all of his cajoling and pleading to convince Erik to sit on a stump with Wolverine and some of the other men, Charles draped across his lap, bored with the conversation within five minutes and whispering into Erik’s mind all the depraved things he plans to do to Erik once he gets him alone. 

Erik finds himself noticing, nights like these, the way Charles’s shadow never seems to stay in one place. It’s constantly shifting, sometimes disappearing altogether or expanding outward, spreading like a maw to consume the shadows around it. In bed, Charles is alternately passionate and gentle. Erik never knows what to expect; sometimes Charles is tender, treating Erik more like a beloved husband than a warrior or a thrall. Other times Erik is certain Charles is determined to push him as far as he can go, to discover the very edges of Erik’s limits.

It doesn’t matter which it is. Erik lives for it. 

Towns are sparser as they continue to travel, and Charles restrains them to one raid every other week at the absolute most. In the absence of war, Erik wants nothing more than to spend all his time in Charles’s bed, kneeling with his mouth around Charles’s cock or Charles’s fingers twisting inside his ass. He relishes the way Charles’s come continues to leak out of him for hours the next day, a constant reminder. He chases after those small smiles Charles gives him when no one else is looking, the possessive curl of Charles’s arm around his waist when he hands him his bowl at dinner.

Every now and then the crew grows antsy, worried that the Hel-shadows might return, or so desperate for a raid that they’re practically crawling out of their own skins with impatience. Erik doesn’t ask him to do it, but he knows that Charles takes care of this for him, as well. In some distant way he’s aware of the thin web of magic Charles drapes over their minds at times like these - just heavy enough to dull the edges of their worn-out nerves, lulling men from mutiny. It mirrors the way he can sense Charles constantly now, a spectral presence on the periphery of his own thoughts, as if Charles has tied their minds together with a single silken ribbon. He keeps his promise; Erik never detects anything more than an occasional brush of Charles’s mind against his own, and then always with a sense of care and reassurance.

“The Rus’ warriors are on the move,” Charles tells him one night, tracing one black-tipped finger along Erik’s collarbone, his other hand resting in Erik’s lap as if it has always belonged there, idly feeling for Erik’s cock through his trousers. “They will be waiting for us by the time we reach the Byzantine border.”

Erik catches Charles’s hand with his, kisses the pad of his thumb, says: “Good.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The _draugr_ that is mentioned is a type of vengeful spirit from Viking legend. They aren’t really relevant to the story, but the myth is pretty cool, so I still recommend checking it out! The Wikipedia article is [here.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugr)


	4. Chapter 4

PART FOUR

Let us now wind  
the web of war  
Where the warrior banners  
are forging forward  
Let his life  
not be taken;  
Only the Valkyrie  
can choose the slain.

\- Njála

\--

9.

_January 1116, Kingdom of Serbia._

Ten days from the Byzantine border.

“I got you something,” Charles says.

Erik frowns, glancing up from his scabbard and the fallen trinket he’s stitching back into the leather. The last time Charles got him a present, it was the heart of a white stag. Eating it, Charles had claimed, would make Erik strong. 

Charles is standing at the entrance of their tent, hands clasped behind his back, rocking on his heels and grinning. That particular grin, Erik thinks, is dangerously self-satisfied.

“What is it?” he says.

“You’ll like it,” Charles assures him.

“All right. Then what _is_ it?”

“Hold on just one second.” Charles ducks back out of the tent. Erik can hear his steps receding into the distance, and then out of earshot. It’s several seconds before they return again. This time, Erik can sense what Charles is carrying long before he’s back to the tent and holding it out with both hands.

“That’s an Ulfberht blade!” Erik can feel the maker’s mark inlaid near the hilt. He can sense the prestigious pattern weld of the different metals woven together in a knotted design and then pounded flat and sharp. Erik has seen an Ulfberht sword - a true Ulfberht, not counterfeit - only once before, and in the hands of a king.

Charles smiles. “It’s yours.”

“Where did you get this?” It’s not from any of Erik’s crewmen, that much is clear. A blade like this belongs in heroes’ sagas and in the graves of the fiercest warlords. For Charles to give it to him - for Charles to think he _deserves_ something like this - 

“Never you mind about that,” Charles says, placing the hilt in Erik’s waiting hand. “It belongs to you.”

Erik has learned better than to argue with valkyrie.

\--

Seven days from the Byzantine border.

Charles lies between Erik’s legs with Erik’s cock in his mouth, his tongue curving beneath the shaft, Erik’s fingers tangled in his hair and his blood pulsing through his body to the rhythm of Charles’s head bobbing up and down. He groans and Charles responds, pushing into his mind the sense of how it feels - the heaviness of Erik’s cock between his lips, the thick base and the salty taste of the head, the wrinkled texture of Erik’s circumcision scar on the tip of Charles’s tongue. Erik lets himself fall headlong into the depths of Charles’s magnificent power, lets Charles spread himself through to every corner of his mind, filling him, swelling beneath his sternum, and Erik never wants to untie this bond. Not ever.

It’s broad daylight now, the sun risen in the sky for two hours already. Around them, outside, men are taking down their tents and packing the horses, turning their gazes to the south. Soon, Charles and Erik will join them. But now - just for now, none of the rest of that exists. The world is the two of them, their hands and thoughts braided together, Charles’s fingers squeezing tight when Erik finally comes down his throat.

\--

Four days from the Byzantine border.

The Wolverine has his eye on the horizon.

“I can smell it,” he says.

“What?”

Wolverine inhales, deep, through his nose. He shakes his head, and doesn’t answer.

\--

Three days from the Byzantine border.

Smoke rising in the hills.

Erik takes a small pack of scouts ahead with him. There is no tree cover and so they travel on horseback, for a faster escape if they need it.

They don’t need it.

The village - if it can even be called that, as it seemed to consist of nothing more than a few ramshackle houses and lean-tos constructed of clay and driftwood - has been burnt to the ground. They try to respect the bodies of the dead, but it seems as if there are bones no matter where they step, blackened under their feet, fleshless skulls gazing sightless at them from the rubble. 

Erik doesn’t realize what it is until he senses the metal shining through the ash. He digs it out on his hands and knees and rubs the soot from the brass menorah with the sleeve of his tunic, rubs until his wrist is raw from the friction.

The Jews had tried to run, but they had not run fast enough.

\--

Three days from the Byzantine border.

Erik digs the graves himself, and washes the bones he can find by hand.

The clothes have been seared off, but Erik tears his own tunic into strips to tie _avnet_ around the remains. 

After, he prays over the graves.

 _Forgive me,_ he whispers: once, twice, forty times. _I cannot bury you with honor. I have no_ tachrichim _, no casket. I do not even know your names._

\--

Three days from the Byzantine border.

For seven days and seven nights, they camp near the ruins. Erik rips his shirt over the heart and pulls off his leather boots. He sits on the ground inside his tent, silent. Charles brings him food and he eats. He sleeps in the dirt and does not bathe, even though he can feel the ashes of his people rubbed deep into his pores and the lines of his hands, their grave-soil black underneath his nails. 

For seven days and seven nights, Erik mourns.

\--

Two days from the Byzantine border.

“When we kill the Shadow King,” Erik says, as they travel down the coast, the salty air whipping their banners, “will the killing stop?”

“No,” Charles says. “Men will always kill other men, from now until the end of time. The Shadow King did not create religion. Nor did he create hatred, or vice.” Charles reaches over, between their horses, and grasps Erik’s hand. “But ten million lives will be spared because of you, so please do not think you fight in vain.”

\--

One day from the Byzantine border.

They send out scouts in all directions. An unnecessary precaution; Charles would sense any enemy from leagues away and redirect them with a thought. But it makes the crew feel better, to know there are men on the ground, with eyes and ears open.

The Eastern Christians are not as violent as the Romans, but when they allied themselves with the Empire, as far as Erik is concerned that was a pact sealed with blood. There are plenty of Crusaders among their people, just as there are in the West. Crusaders whose heads Erik wishes to crush beneath his heel.

He has to remind himself frequently of the greater goal at hand.

Night comes swiftly. Erik’s sleep is restless.

\--

8.

_February 1116, Byzantium_

The warriors from the Rus’ states arrive at dawn. The sun rising behind them makes their hair glitter gold, their axes silver as moonlight. Erik knows his crew seems motley in comparison, after traveling for months in the dead of winter, but they stand with valkyrie. In the end, that is all that matters. They bow low at the feet of Charles’s spectral form, and stay bowed even after he has drawn the human illusion over himself once more.

Erik spends the afternoon forging swords out of scrap metal from the towns they’ve raided - forged not on an anvil but with the heat of his magic, sharper and deadlier than anything created by the hands of men. Charles sits at his side, quiet, the tattoos beneath his skin shifting with the hours but his gaze never varying from Erik’s work. Erik knows he does not need one, but he forges Charles a sword as well. Steel, with a bone handle. Erik’s inlay is nothing more than a small, unstylized _M_ engraved above the hilt, a private homage to his birth name - the one given to him by his mother in a desert land that is no longer quite so far away.

Charles touches it with a delicacy that borders on the sacred, as if Erik has given him not a blade but a piece of his own self. He kisses Erik, standing amid the pile of metal that glows bright in Erik’s mind, his lips hot and soft, arms clinging around Erik’s neck as if afraid to let him go.

He disappears at night, though, and does not return until past dawn. Erik finds it difficult to sleep in their bed without Charles there with him. The furs feel cold and empty. He misses the gentle curl of Charles’s mind around his own, Charles’s body pressed to his. But when Charles comes back into camp, he is smiling, wide enough that it lights up his entire face, a valravn perched upon his shoulder.

Charles says: “I found us a ship.”

Erik gathers a small crew, an even mix of Rus’ and his own Nordmenn. They dress in southern garb and let Charles lead them down to the docks of Dyrrachium, where he shows them a large war galley, easily twice the size of a Northern ship, bustling with men readying it for battle.

“Charles,” Erik says slowly. “We cannot take that ship.”

“Why not? It’s faster than anything you would find in the North, and larger besides.”

“Are you serious? Look at it. It’s - well, for one, there is absolutely no chance we will be able to steal that boat without someone taking notice. Namely, the two hundred men staffing it.”

“So what? Or have you already forgotten what I am?” One corner of Charles’s mouth tilts up. “I guarantee you, no one will have the faintest idea the ship is gone until we’re already halfway to the holy land.”

\--

Charles keeps his word. 

Erik’s heart is in his throat the next night, as he leads the entire horde of Northern warriors - all four hundred and seventy-two men, clad in furs, their beards yellow and braided, with axes strapped to their backs - down through the darkened streets of the Byzantine city. Every shadow is a threat, every candlelit window a pair of eyes gazing down on them from above. He trusts Charles, but it is hard to stay his nerves when he can sense the fear in his own men - can feel it in the warmth of hands resting on metal knives and axes and swords. 

But, as promised, the ship is deserted. Every man on the docks seems to have fallen asleep where they stood - curled up among the ropes and sprawled out on the piers. Erik holds his breath as he steps over a man whose body blocks the gangway to their ship. The men follow in an equally-tentative fashion, every one of them alert and vigilant, eyes as keen on the land as they are on the sea.

The ship has fifty oars, more than Erik has ever seen before. He divides the men into shifts, allotting equal rowing, deck, and rest time to every one of them, including himself. Only Charles is exempt; even if he weren’t valkyrie, his mind-gift and inability to sleep makes him ideally suited as captain, to spread his awareness out across the water, directing them away from other fleets and ensuring they stay on steady course even through the night.

Erik takes first shift. The Nordmenn are built for this job, have been doing it half their lives, but it’s been months since any of them oared a ship. Erik’s arms and back ache after only half an hour, sweat trickling down his spine. He tears his shirt off over his head and dunks it in the bucket of water one of the crewmen carries past. Whenever the exertion feels near-unbearable, he squeezes water out over his head, just for that brief moment’s relief. Charles smirks at him when he walks past, once they’re a few hours out from port, and Erik is presented with a mental image of himself: gleaming with perspiration, his hair wet and slicked against his brow, the bare muscles of his arms and abdomen straining and flexing with each row.

He’s grateful when the next shift comes to take over a few hours past dawn, handing his oar off to Hrodny the Fair and dunking his shirt once more in the water bucket before pulling it back over his head. Charles is up in the crow’s nest and has been, for the past forty-five minutes. Erik kept glancing up at him as he rowed, catching glimpses of Charles - a tiny speck of a thing high above the ship, the stark black tattoos on his arms invisible even on his pale skin at such a height.

Determined, Erik climbs the rigging, ignoring the way his muscles twitch in pain, and swings himself over the ledge. Charles is standing with his elbows resting on the barrel, gazing out at the far horizon. It takes Erik a moment to recognize that black streak in the distance as a valravn. Erik wonders if valravne, like the crows the Nordmenn have latched in a cage on the floor, always fly toward the nearest land. But valravne are smart, with the minds of men. Perhaps Charles will have them follow this bird all the way to Jerusalem.

Erik doesn’t speak. He just leans against the barrel next to Charles, their arms brushing, watching the waves roll past beneath them. After a while, the rocking of the ship - exaggerated at this height - starts to make him feel increasingly sick to his stomach, but just when he’s considering heading back down the rigging to the deck, he feels Charles’s touch sweeping through his mind, the slight tug of something that feels almost like a request for permission. Erik grits his teeth, nods, and the nausea fades.

They stay up there for hours, until Erik’s rest shift ends. After the first twenty minutes Erik tilts his hand upward and Charles touches two fingers to his wrist, as gentle as the presence on the edges of his mind. The Middle Sea stretches out all around them, blue water the color of Charles’s eyes. Words feel unnecessary. 

\--

7.

_February 1116, the Mediterranean Sea_

The men take to it, being back aboard a ship. It is the tradition of their ancestors, they tell Erik. The Nordmenn may have invaded well into the southern mainland by now, but the North built its glory on the open sea, sailing to wide and mysterious new lands, raiding and pillaging where they saw fit, claiming what they needed with sword and ax.

But Erik, long though he may have lived among these native sailors, was not born with the sea in his blood. More and more frequently he finds himself seeking Charles out for relief from the nausea that churns in his gut. And though he may be a creature of the North, Charles never once mocks him the way Erik’s crew did the first time they set sail under Erik’s captainship, laughing and smirking as he vomited over the stern of his own ship.

Wolverine hates being out at sea more than any of them, though; wherever he is from, it is somewhere very far from the water. He keeps belowdecks most of the time, even skiving off rowing duty when he thinks he can get away with it, hunkering down in his hammock and surfacing only at the prospect of wine.

Erik takes the Captain’s cabins. They’re small and cramped, even smaller than his tent, with room enough for a narrow bed and traveling trunk, nothing more. He had dumped his and Charles’s packs in the trunk, and he leaves them there for the remainder of the journey. The narrowness of the bed does not bother him; Charles seems to prefer it if Erik sleeps with Charles curled up atop him, Charles’s cheek above his heart, a warm weight that Erik has long since grown used to.

And even though they are on the water, far from the reach of even the darkest Hel-shadow, the tattoo lines beneath Charles’s skin never fade. When Erik asks him about them Charles simply says, “They’re a part of who I am. And they are a part of keeping you safe.”

Erik tries to argue that he can protect himself, that Charles chose him for his strength, but Charles simply smiles at the book he holds open in his lap and pretends not to hear.

\--

The weeks go by painfully slowly. At last, Erik gains his sea legs, as adept on deck as any of the Nordmenn. His muscles cease to ache when he rows, and grow stronger instead, muscles he never used for fighting and never knew existed. Even the Wolverine finds it in himself to creep out of his hammock from time to time, even if only to swig wine and smoke his pipe over the rail. 

In winter, the seas are choppy on the best of days. The worst of days bring storms that twist around their ship, sending the sea crashing over the deck - enough flooding that Erik has to assign men to the duty of bailing water just to keep their vessel afloat. They lose two men in the first storm, one swept off deck by a particularly strong wave, another fallen from the rigging in the high wind. The second storm takes three more. 

The weather is not the only threat, however. The Nordmenn chew scurvy-grass to keep their teeth healthy, but there is no plant or herb to treat the bloody flux. For two weeks, over half their crew is laid sick below-decks, delirious with fever. The men who carry the buckets of their black diarrhea up to be tossed into the sea soon fall ill as well. The best Erik can do is see that they are fed - primarily mashed fruit and gruel - and that they drink enough cider to make up for what they lose in their expulsions. 

In the holy land of Erik’s youth, the Muslim doctors might have treated the sick men with a tea of cannabis leaves. But they are still far from land, and farther still from the educated Serkmen who might have been able to lend aid. And so, instead, they wait it out.

They lose close to fifty men by the time the disease has run its course. The bodies are wrapped in canvas and thrown overboard. By the Northern creed, the bodies should have been burned, the smoke carrying their spirits to Valhalla. But they sail a wooden ship, and Erik doesn’t like the idea of keeping the remains onboard; he has seen illness spread even after the sick man has died. Charles takes it on himself to tell the crew that he will personally assure the men’s souls find peace in the afterlife, and they will not return as ghosts to haunt their fellow crew - even though Erik knows as well as Charles does that such things are not within his control. Empty words, given meaning only because they come from a valkyrie’s mouth.

Days pass, and then weeks. Even the sickest of the men grow strong again, and Erik starts to imagine he can smell the scent of spices floating on the wind. Spices, or ashes. His memories of the two blur together, fragrant but gritty on his tongue, tasting of death. He spends hours standing at the stern of the ship, eyes narrowed at the horizon, determined to be the first of his crew to spot land.

He expects that as they draw closer, the nightmares will return on the heels of these phantom scents; and yet, somehow, they never do. He sleeps sound, blanketed by the warmth of Charles’s body, even when the seas rage outside and the men, drunk on wine, sing and yell throughout the night. 

Erik asks Charles about it one morning, while they’re still lying in bed, Charles’s head resting atop Erik’s stomach, fingers idly toying with the short curls of Erik’s pubic hair. Charles’s gaze flickers up to Erik’s face, and for a moment he is silent, hand gone still at Erik’s hip. 

“What?” Erik prods him, frowning.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says. “I should have asked first, but I thought you might say no, and I couldn’t stand to see you in pain like that any longer - ”

“What did you do?” Erik’s pulse quickens almost instantly, both afraid to imagine what Charles might have done and afraid not to.

Charles’s tattoos shift restlessly beneath his skin. “I suppressed them,” he says. “The nightmares. Not your memories themselves, of course, I would never do that - but the dreams, yes. I hated watching you have those dreams, night after night. I just wanted them to stop.”

Erik feels something thick forming in the back of his throat; it’s difficult to speak around it. “You promised you wouldn’t do anything to my mind without my permission!”

“I know. And I said I was sorry. But Erik - you were practically clawing at yourself in your sleep! And what I saw of the dreams you were having … no one should have to live through that once, never mind every night for the rest of their lives.” Charles pushes himself up onto his forearms, facing Erik, his eyes wide but steady, pale in the dawn light. “If you want me to stop, I will. I just think …. You don’t have to _do_ this. You are fighting back. You are reclaiming Jerusalem for its people. You have slain a thousand Crusaders, if your trophies are to be believed. You don’t have to torture yourself for the rest of your life. It wasn’t your fault.”

And that - that is the essence of the matter. It must be, because suddenly Erik feels like his skin has been drawn too tight over his bones, hot, like a fever burning through his core. 

Charles pulls himself up the length of Erik’s torso and places both hands on Erik’s cheeks, their noses an inch apart, his breath warm on Erik’s lips. “There was nothing you could have done to save them,” Charles says. “Nothing. Your mother gave you the gift of life. She would not want you to spend it feeling guilty over something you had no hand in.”

Erik’s throat is dry. His mouth, full of ashes. It tastes like frankincense, and saffron. “I know,” he says. His voice comes out raw. 

“Do you?” Charles holds his gaze. Erik can feel him, like a cool breeze, drifting through the fabric of his thoughts. “Knowing something logically is not the same thing as truly believing it.”

Erik cannot turn his face away, so he closes his eyes instead. Charles sighs, almost inaudibly, and presses a kiss to Erik’s forehead, his lips lingering long enough that Erik can memorize the feel and shape of them, storing it away somewhere he can never forget, for however much longer he has to live.

“All right,” he says at last.

“What?”

“All right,” Erik says again. His eyes open. “No more nightmares.”

\--

A week later, the valravn comes swooping back to their ship, wings like black fire against the sky, an olive branch clenched in its beak.

\--

6.

_March 1116, Isdud, Kingdom of Jerusalem._

They anchor the ship on the shore outside the ruins of the Ashdod-Sea fortress, some two days’ walk from the holy city. The citadel and lighthouse were destroyed in an earthquake before Erik was born, but some of its old grandeur is still visible in the elegant stonemasonry and the wide carved steps leading from the lighthouse down to the shore. 

The seawater is cool around his legs as Erik wades to shore. He has left most of his belongings on the ship; he won’t be needing them. All he has is Charles’s sword strapped to his back, his silver knife sheathed at his waist, and a small pack of provisions. They need to move quickly now. Anything that can be left behind, is. 

The sand beneath Erik’s feet is the same sand he remembers from his family’s trips to the shore when he was a child: golden and warm from the sunlight. And yet as soon as Erik steps onto the beach, he can tell that something is wrong. Different. 

He glances back at Charles, who is stepping out of the water a few paces behind him. 

“The Shadow King’s influence extends from Egypt to Antioch,” Charles says. “You can feel it, can’t you? The darkness.”

“How?” Erik’s talent is in metal; it has never been with the mind.

Charles shakes his head. His hair is tousled with sea salt and wind. “Magic like this leaves its mark,” he says. “Look at your men.”

Erik does. He sees immediately what Charles wanted him to see: the men are as wary as Erik feels, their gazes fixed on the ruins as if expecting ghosts to come stepping out from behind the stones. And once the thought has crept into Erik’s head, it lodges there. It is just past midday, the sun slowly creeping down from its apex. He does not want to be here when night falls. He does not want to see what creatures lurk behind these corners, what shades will rise from these rocky graves.

But he fears going forth into the desert almost as much. Four hundred-odd men might be easy enough to hide in the forests and mountains of Beiaraland and Bohemia, but in open space they are far more visible. Erik has not forgotten what Charles said of this Shadow King’s powers. His only hope is to trust Charles’s mind-magic is stronger. That those runes on his skin might protect them just a little while longer.

“We have to keep going,” Charles says quietly, fingers curling around Erik’s wrist. “No matter what.”

Erik nods.

They keep going.

\--

Night comes quickly, when it does come - dropping over the land like a curtain over a window, the sky darkening to purple and then black. Erik pitches his tent as quickly as he can, while they still have light; he’s ordered that no more than one fire per fifty men be built. Bandits live in the desert caves, but they’re the least of Erik’s worries - they don’t have nearly enough wood or oil to maintain a ring of fire around the camp all through the night. The best Erik can do is add a few shifts to guard duty, for people to man the fires and keep them burning bright all the way til dawn.

He overhears the men talking, whispered voices around the campfires. Hel-shadows, they say. Or _draugr_ , vengeful ghosts with magical abilities who can curse men and influence them through their dreams. All Northern legends, legends that have no place in these deserts. Erik fears what might happen if they lose their trust in Charles’s power. Fear can drive men mad as easily as it can summon a Hel-shadow. And the more men, the more pervasive the madness.

That he manages to fall asleep at all, to Erik, feels like a miracle. But sleep he does, drifting to his dreams on the scent of Charles’s hair. 

He wakes to chaos. 

Geitir bursts into his tent at the crack of dawn. Charles has already rolled off Erik’s chest by the time he opens his eyes and is sitting up in the bed next to him, staring at the Nordman with a grim expression on his face. 

“They came,” Charles says.

“Hel-shadows,” Geitir confirms. His skin is the yellowish color of spoiled milk. “They attacked in the middle of the night. I slept through it - we all did.”

Erik turns his gaze to Charles, tongue like sandpaper in his mouth. “You didn’t wake me?”

“I didn’t know!” Charles says. Erik doesn’t think he’s ever seen Charles look like this before. Alarmed. “I never heard a thing. Never _sensed_ anything!”

Erik tears off the blankets and follows Geitir out of his tent, heedless of his own nakedness. The camp is in a frenzy, men dashing about in various stages of undress, carrying torches and axes as if either would be any real aid against Hel-shadows. As if there _were_ any more Hel-shadows - it’s past dawn now. If it’s true, if the Hel-shadows were here last night, they are long gone.

“This way,” Geitir says, beckoning for Erik to follow, cutting through the packs of panicking men and the blazing bonfires. Erik doesn’t have to look around to sense that Charles is following them; he can sense him, trailing along in Erik’s footprints, and the echo of Charles’s thoughts suggest they’re wound just as tight as Erik’s own.

They turn past a particularly large tent, and there it is. Fully half of their entire camp, decimated. There are no bodies. No evidence that anyone was there at all, once the tents were torn down and the fires put out. Smoke still rises black toward the sky, tilting flags whipping in the wind. But all the people are gone.

And it seems unlikely - insane, even - but Erik can’t help thinking how sudden it is, how arbitrary, that the Hel-shadows killed to this point and no further. It looks as if a line had been drawn in the sand, an even split halfway through the camp; Erik can see tents only partway torn apart, fires just half-smothered. Perhaps dawn came too quickly, and the Hel-shadows were forced to retreat. Or perhaps something else. Perhaps - 

Erik looks back, at Charles, standing there with a blanket drawn round his shoulders. But even so cloaked, the tattoos he bears are still visible, shifting and twisting more markedly than ever.

“They only hit this half of the camp,” Charles says, and there’s something hollow to his voice, like a note of disbelief. “Our side. It’s untouched.”

“How many dead?” Erik asks, turning to Geitir. 

“Hard to say.” Geitir’s mouth is one thin line, his brows knit together. “We’d have to count up the survivors to get a true estimate. But we lost a hundred men, at least.”

“The Wolverine?”

Geitir shakes his head. “No one’s seen him since last night.”

Erik swallows a curse and turns away from the wreckage of his camp. “Rally the survivors,” he says. “Get them under control. We must be at Jerusalem by nightfall.”

He heads back into the fray himself. A few fights have broken out among the crew; Erik throws out his power and grasps onto their metal brooches and knives, yanks man off of man. But breaking up fights one by one is not going to solve the greater problem: fear. It’s infectious, and the disease has spread through his entire camp. Everywhere he looks, he sees it - in the whites of men’s widened eyes, in the blanching knuckles of clenched fists, the spark of flint as someone struggles to light another fire. 

It’s sudden and vicious, the rage that surges up beneath Erik’s sternum. He yells, “Stop!” and throws out both his hands, seizing onto everything metal he can reach. The entire camp goes immediately, totally still. 

Erik stands there, struggling to measure his shallow, heaving breaths. G-d, but his head is spinning, and for a moment he feels as if he might fall, might drop beneath the surface of the earth and sink down low to the very center of it, metal soaking into his bones. Then the moment passes, and the ground is solid beneath his feet once more. 

“Calm yourselves,” he says, loud enough that he’s certain that even the most distant man will hear him, his voice amplified by some queer power - Charles’s, no doubt. “Are you Sudrmenn, to be so sickened at spilled blood? Will you forsake your strength to lose yourselves in your fear? You are men of the North! You are killers and raiders and pillagers - you leave your fears in the sea! You are not a litter of children, afraid of the dark. Calm - your - minds!”

The faces of Nordmenn have always been hard to read, but Erik can see the change in their bearing. And he knows his words have had an effect; already, he can see chagrin in the slight downward cast to eyes, the way shoulders only-just hunch forward. 

“We have suffered a loss today, that is true,” Erik says. “But have you so quickly forgotten? We stand with valkyrie! The gods have shown where their favor lies, and it is with us. With _this_ cause. Tomorrow we will take Jerusalem from the grasp of a powerful witch. We will invade a city that is defended by the best knights and strongest warriors the South has to offer, and we will _take_ it. Years ago, our ancestors raided the shores of the land across the Middle Sea. Do we abandon that legacy?”

Silence.

“I ask you again,” Erik says, raising his voice still louder. “ _Do we abandon it?_ ”

“No, Captain!” 

Erik’s gaze snaps out across the sea of men spread before him - and his crew parts down the center, making way for one man. The Wolverine is naked, his hair dark with soot, and the curving bone claws which extend from his knuckles are red with blood - but he is alive. 

“No,” Wolverine says again, when at last he is standing but a few paces from Erik himself, his chest swelling with every breath he takes, eyes bright as a drugged man’s. “No, we do not abandon that legacy. But we will _surpass_ it!”

Erik fights the grin that threatens to split across his face. “Yes,” he says, and he forces himself to look out over his crew once more, the men - foreign and familiar - spread out in this wide barren desert. “We _will_ surpass it. We will build a new legacy for the North. Tomorrow - tomorrow, men, we establish ourselves as conquerors of this world. Tomorrow, we strike Rome at its root. We will crush their skulls beneath our heels, and burn their flesh in pyres that reach high as heaven. After tomorrow, every man in the world will know our names!”

Wolverine lifts his fist and yells, something guttural and wordless and bestial. And then the others join in, until the desert echoes with the fierce roar of two hundred and fifty men, drunk with their lust for Christian blood.

\--

5.

They march.

The sun is warm on their backs - or at least, it is at first. The longer they go on, the hotter it gets, until at last men are stripping off their furs and tunics, going half-naked through the wilderness with their hair tied up off their necks. Even Erik finds himself sweating through his shirt; he remembers the summers of his youth, much hotter than this, days when the heat pressed down around him, suffocated him. But he has been too long in the North, now. He isn’t used to it, the way he once was. At least his skin doesn’t burn as the Nordmenn’s does.

Out of them all, only Charles seems unaffected by the heat. He no longer even bothers to put in the effort to fake perspiration; he simply walks, head held high and his eyes on the horizon. If he’s aware of the way the others are struggling, he gives no sign of it.

Slowly, the landscape grows familiar. A certain rocky crag or a type of bush draws up faint shadows in the back of Erik’s mind, even if he can’t quite place them. But the closer they get to the holy city, the more Erik’s sense of it grows: that darkness, sinking into the land like a slow rot. Erik has the strange sense that were he to reach out his arm he might touch the thin veil between this world and the next. Might rip it apart, releasing whatever lies beyond. 

It scares him, in a way he doesn’t want to admit to anyone. Not even Charles. Not death - death, he knows, is certain, and sooner rather than later. What frightens him more is the way he already feels as if there is something inside him that is beginning to decay - something soft and fundamental, something he cannot live without. The closer he gets to the city, the deeper it curls into him and eats away at his soul. He does not want to see this Shadow King, though he knows he must. He does not want to look into the heart of that darkness which has stained the fabric of his world. 

Erik orders the crew to make camp some six leagues from the holy city - just far enough away that they can afford to build fires. This time, Erik has them light one fire every dozen paces, building a perimeter around the camp. It’s easier this time, with their numbers cut almost in half. They pitch their tents close together and the guards work in shifts, watching the land around the camp, armed with whatever oil they have left and prepared to spread the fire at a moment’s notice. Erik and Charles set up their tent at the very center, hoping that Charles’s protection might expand to cover them all.

“You’re afraid,” Charles says once they are alone together again. He has brought a small lamp into their tent and set it on the ground near the center, the tiny flame barely enough to light their space. 

“Yes,” Erik says. 

Charles sits next to him on their pallet, the sides of their knees knocking together. “You think you are going to your death,” he says.

Erik stares into the lamp-flame, the flickering light hypnotizing, somehow. “Yes.”

Charles reaches over and twines their fingers, squeezing Erik’s hand. “Whether you die or not … the choice is mine,” he says. “I will let you live, if that is what you want.”

Charles’s skin is soft and warm. Touching him, Erik can almost forget about that darkness he senses just beyond the edges of their camp, creeping closer with every passing second. He isn’t sure if Charles is asking him a question or not.

“But when you die,” Charles continues a moment later, “whether it is tomorrow or thirty years from now, that is not the end. I’ve chosen you. We’ll be together, you and I. Forever, the way we were meant to be. The valkyrie and his glorious warrior.”

Erik smiles and turns his head to press a kiss to Charles’s cheek. “Thank you,” he says. 

“What for?”

But Erik only shakes his head and tightens his grip around Charles’s hand. 

Charles leans in and kisses him.

Erik parts his lips at the press of Charles’s mouth and Charles’s tongue slips between them, Erik curling an arm around Charles’s waist and pulling him in close, wrapping himself in the safety of Charles’s warmth. How strange it is, this sense of certainty that they will win. That the Crusaders will fall and Jerusalem will be theirs. Perhaps it is nothing more than his faith in Charles. His faith that Charles wants this every bit as much as Erik does.

“Turn,” Erik breathes, his lips still grazing Charles’s. “Please. I want you.”

Charles doesn’t have to ask what he means. He’s in Erik’s mind, tied in with the threads of Erik’s thoughts, close enough that for a moment Erik can’t tell where he ends and Charles begins. 

And then - there he is, Charles, changed. Or unchanged, really. This is who he is. Erik gazes into the valkyrie’s dozen black eyes and he thinks … he thinks, something in them feels familiar. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he lifts a hand to touch the tips of his fingers to the grey skin that stretches taut across the valkyrie’s skull. Charles’s many eyes follow the movement of his hand, and Erik senses a brief flicker of something like uncertainty shuddering down the tie between them. He’s not sure if the feeling belongs to Charles or to himself.

But he tilts forward anyway, his eyes falling shut, and his lips meet bone. This close, he can feel the thrill of danger coursing fast through his system. One wrong move, one bad angle, and Charles’s teeth could cut a hole through Erik’s mouth. He licks along where Charles’s lower lip would be, if valkyrie had lips, and he feels an echo of something bright in Charles’s mind through their bond.

 _< <Tell me what you want>>_ Charles sends to him, the question presenting itself at the forefront of Erik’s mind as if he’d thought of it himself.

Erik responds not with words, but images.

Amusement, on Charles’s end - and those dark wings spread out behind him, blocking out the light from the campfires outside, cloaking them in shadow. 

_< <That,>>_ Charles tells him, _< <will require significant changes to my natural anatomy.>>_

Erik leans back and arches a brow. “You’re used to that, though, aren’t you?”

The valkyrie makes a strange sound like shattering glass. It takes Erik a moment to realize: it’s a laugh. And then Charles reaches forward and splays a sharp-fingered hand on the center of Erik’s chest. One long nail catches on Erik’s tunic and Charles slowly draws it upward, over Erik’s head, careful not to rip the fabric. Erik is breathing fast, shallow, his shoulders heaving with every inhalation. Bare-chested, he can’t help feeling exposed and vulnerable. How easy it would be, for Charles to press just a little too hard and tear that finger into his stomach, Erik’s guts spilling red and hot into Charles’s scaled palm.

Erik slides a hand between the folds of Charles’s cloak, searching until his touch meets flesh. Charles’s true form is skeletal; Erik thinks he can feel every one of his ribs, can count the strange sharp ridges at his sternum.

Charles draws his wings back in and lets Erik explore his body, though he makes no effort to remove his cloak. Perhaps he prefers to wear it, Erik thinks. Charles’s spine is knotted, each vertebra like a tangle of thorns. There is no heartbeat when Erik presses his hand over Charles’s chest, and for a moment he thinks there is no breath either - but then Charles’s torso swells, however slightly, beneath his touch. 

Erik’s hand drifts down lower, and he bites the inside of his cheek as he finds the crease of Charles’s thigh with his hip. He knows that, by rights, there should be nothing there, but Charles has already altered his form enough so that Erik’s fingers are wrap around the shaft of a cock rather than empty air.

Charles sucks in a breath, air hissing between his teeth, and Erik smiles. “You can feel it, then,” he says.

_< <Yes. Of course.>>_

Which makes sense, when Erik thinks about it, because Charles’s human body is an illusion as well, but he still … experiences pleasure from it. Erik tightens his grip and pulls a slow stroke down Charles’s shaft. The shape and feel of Charles’s cock is the same as it always is, but it’s longer, and thicker, than what Erik is used to. More on the scale of Charles’s natural form - although, thank G-d, lacking spikes.

Charles’s eyes flick down to Erik’s waist - and Erik’s trousers vanish, only to reappear a split second later in a pile next to the bed. Erik’s still only half-hard, but Charles stares at his dick as if he’s never seen anything quite like it. 

_< <You truly want this?>>_ Charles pushes into his mind. _< <With me, like this?>>_

_Yes._

Erik kisses Charles’s shoulder, lips moving against the silken fabric of his cloak, feeling for the line of a collarbone through the cloth. 

Charles spreads his long-fingered hand on Erik’s chest and slowly pushes him down onto the blankets. Erik reaches for his pack and finds the small jar of oil they’ve been using in preparation, slicking his fingers and reaching between his legs to stretch himself open. 

Charles looks on, all dozen of his eyes fixed on the ministrations of Erik’s hand. Erik pushes himself to his limits, moving as quickly and as effectively as he can without it becoming painful. He wants this. G-d, how is it that this form, which used to bring such terror, now arouses him beyond the point of rationality? 

Erik twists his fingers inside himself, finding that perfect spot where even the slightest pressure is enough to make him cry out, head tilting back and his legs spreading further. The valkyrie takes in a sudden breath, one that rattles audibly in the back of his throat. 

“I want you,” Erik says again, scissoring his fingers, relishing the aching stretch of it. “I want you to fuck me just the way you are - I want to feel your cock splitting me open.” _Fuck me like it’s my last night on earth. It very well may be._

Charles’s fingers slip back along Erik’s thighs, moving upward, exploring Erik’s body with unusual delicacy, his sharp claws leaving no marks on Erik’s skin. A single one of his hands easily spans the entirety of Erik’s torso; and Erik wants to see Charles take him, take all of him, cover his body with that shadowy cloak and expansive wings, fuck him like he’s something far more than a man.

“You are beautiful,” Charles says out loud, in that strange and jarring way of his. “Mine.”

“Yours,” Erik vows, pulling his fingers from his ass to press both hands to Charles’s cheekbones, drawing him down near, impatient with the space that still exists between them.

Charles leans over him, casting Erik into an even deeper shadow as he kisses him once more, Erik’s mouth parts against the cold blades of the valkyrie’s teeth - and then his cheek, and the temple-like indentation at the side of his skull. Charles’s wings shudder beneath his cloak.

Erik shifts beneath him, turning over onto his stomach and pulling his knees up beneath himself, pushing his ass up. He twists to look over his shoulder; Charles’ wings are spread now, dark and huge, curving forward around Erik, bracketing him in. 

“Now,” Erik says.

He feels the head of Charles’s cock pressing up against his hole and Erik takes in a quick breath, forcing himself to exhale slowly as Charles begins to push himself in. It’s five times more painful than it was any of the previous times. Charles is much larger now, and the sheer girth of him makes Erik feel as if his asshole is being torn in two. He bites down hard on his lower lip to keep from yelling, eyes clenched shut, tears prickling hot at his lashes. 

It feels like it will never end. Like Charles will keep pushing in and in and in, forever. Until finally it does end, Charles bottoming out, pressed balls-deep into Erik’s ass. Erik feels full and swollen, already well-used. It’s … not an altogether unpleasant sensation.

Charles rocks his hips against Erik’s ass and groans, a rumbling sound like the shift of land underneath a volcano. Erik finally manages to get his breath under control and he reaches back to grasp onto one of Charles’s bony thighs, using it as leverage as he begins to fuck himself on Charles’s dick, dragging his clenching hole up and down Charles’s thick shaft, gasping every time the bulbous head drags against that pleasurable spot inside of him.

“Fuck,” he whispers, his own cock throbbing between his legs. He has to let go of Charles’s leg to take himself in hand, but by that point Charles has already fallen into a rhythm of his own, thrusting firm and deep into Erik’s hole. 

Charles’s wingtip is a scant few inches from Erik’s left hand; Erik stretches out his fingers and can touch the tip of it, the hollow black bone that feels smooth as obsidian. The feel of Charles’s body against his is cold, but his cock, at least, is feverishly hot inside Erik’s ass, pumping in and out. It’s all Erik can think about - the place where they are joined together, the sweet pain of each forceful thrust, the way his and Charles’s minds are still laced so tight he doesn’t think the bond will ever unravel. 

It feels impossible, that Charles’s cock could ever be so hard. And yet it is. Erik loves it. Loves thinking of Charles, like this, hard and throbbing with want for him. Fuck, but Erik wants it to hurt. Wants to feel this as he’s charging into battle tomorrow. Wants to feel it up until the day and the hour of his death, when finally he will walk into Charles’s waiting arms, to be with him, forever.

Charles grinds in deep and a shiver rolls down Erik’s spine. He can feel the razor-edged point of Charles’s teeth against his shoulder, not quite biting but pressing close enough that the threat is unmistakable. 

“Do it,” Erik breathes out, his cock jumping in his hand. “Do it. Leave your mark.”

The valkyrie behind him lets out a low growl - and then there’s the knife-hot pain of a single tooth sinking into the skin over Erik’s shoulder blade, cutting a thin line parallel to the ridge of bone. Erik has never in his entire life wanted something to scar more than he does this. He wants to bear Charles’s claim on him from now until the end of time. 

Charles’s mind thrums against his and Erik lets himself fall back, drowning deeper and deeper into the intricate shadow of Charles’s soul, a place where he’s so close to the heart of Charles’s power he can practically feel it burning like magnesium at the core of him, a brilliant flame that lights up every corner of Erik’s being. He hadn’t known - until now, until this, he hadn’t known just how powerful Charles really was. He could destroy Erik with a thought. Could make Erik forget he’d ever existed at all, leave him naught but a ghost himself, drifting aimless through the desert, forgetting to eat or drink until he dried to a wispy husk.

Yet somehow Charles chose him, to make strong. Charles _loves_ \- the word bursts into Erik’s consciousness like a blinding white strike of lightning - Charles loves _him._

Erik’s entire body clenches up in a single instant, and for a fraction of a second he is acutely aware of every part of himself, of every tiny thread that makes up the universe, vibrating in unique and musical frequencies, the web of power and magic that is woven all round the earth, binding them to it and tangling up deep beneath Erik’s sternum, as if he himself has placed his fingers on the heartstrings of the world - 

\- and he comes so hard it feels as if the very foundation of his being is being shattered apart, shooting his seed onto the blankets, the warm stickiness of it sliding wet between his fingers. Charles climaxes a second later, though there’s no sense of any kind of ejaculate slicking the inside of Erik’s ass - just Charles’s dick pulsing hard inside him and his name moaned out on Charles’s voice, one of Charles’s arms curving around his stomach and holding him tight.

It’s a long time before Charles slowly pulls out of him and Erik gives in to his trembling legs, lowering himself down onto the blankets and rolling over to face Charles. His ass stings and burns, overstretched and raw, and he’s grateful for it. The pain itself is sweet, woven together with the satiation of his own climax. 

Charles stays hovering above him. Erik touches one finger to the gaunt hollow beneath his cheekbone and lets out a slow breath. “I feel as if I’ve been waiting my entire life for this,” he says. 

Charles’s eyes roam between Erik’s hand, his softening cock, and his face, as if unable to consent to stay in one place for any length of time. “And I have waited for a thousand years,” he says. “I knew I would find you. One day.”

Erik pushes back the cowl of Charles’s cloak, exposing his skull and the spiny ridges that bulge down the back of his neck. His throat, in this form, is even longer than Erik had realized. “And now you have me,” Erik murmurs. 

“And now I have you.” Charles gives his strange hands license to caress Erik’s body, his long nails tracing small patterns on Erik’s fragile skin. “I always will.”

\--

4.

_March 1116, Jerusalem_

The remainder of the night passes without incident. The Hel-shadows do not return, though somehow, Erik finds this more ominous than the alternative. 

Charles confirms his suspicions. “The Shadow-King must have rallied them toward Jerusalem,” he says, in that hollowed-out glasslike voice; he is still wearing his natural form. “They will be waiting for us there, to attack as soon as night falls, when we are at our weakest after a day of fighting.”

They do not bother packing up the camp. Most of them, Erik suspects, will never return to it. They take only what they need: weapons, and shields, and armor. The holy city is within reach. Erik can feel the darkness within it seeping toward them like a river of poisoned blood. It sickens him, to imagine the streets and alleys of his childhood stained by this same shadow. 

“Not for much longer,” Charles says. 

They make a wide circle around the city, keeping it just out of sight and using the mountain for cover, and climb to the peak of the Mount of Olives - the same as the Crusaders did when they took the city so many years ago. And there … there, spread out below them, built atop a plateau amidst the rocky valleys, past the stone of the farmers’ terraces … Jerusalem.

Erik can barely breathe. Even now - G-d, even now, even now … he can still smell burning flesh on the air. He can see the piles of dead bodies outside the gates, burned like so much garbage. He can hear his mother’s voice in his ear: _shalom, shalom -_

There is the touch of a hand on his arm and Erik turns. For a moment, Charles is human again - or nearly so. The press of his fingers is grounding.

“The Fatimids will attack from the north,” Erik says. “We have the high ground, but they will use Mount Scopus to hide themselves from the watchtowers as long as they can. We will not see their troops until they’re already loosing their catapults.”

“The Turks outnumber us twenty-five to one,” the Wolverine says, staking the pole of their standard into the spares grass. “How will they know us from their enemy?”

“Let Charles take care of them,” Erik says. “He has a certain gift for that kind of thing.”

He could have sworn Charles was smirking, if indeed this form’s face could make any expression other than that eternal macabre grin.

“And then we flank them from the east,” Erik says. “It’s a straight shot from here to the city, across the Kidron Valley. They’ll be armed with metal. Fortunately for us.”

A suicide mission, all the same, Erik thinks. Wolverine will almost certainly survive it. Erik will live, because Charles will let him live, and because he has his magic to protect him. For the rest of them, these hardy men of the North who gather behind him, Jerusalem will open itself to welcome their bones.

It is a worthy way to die. It is a death which will be told in sagas for generations to come. If Erik were to turn right now and promise them all they would meet their deaths here, they would welcome it fiercely, fearless and unflinching as only Nordmenn can be.

They sit among the stunted desert shrubs, a few men taking advantage of the shade provided by the rare trees. Erik keeps his eyes on the north. How fruitless, he thinks, to attempt a surprise attack. If the Shadow King’s power is as strong as Charles says it is, he has long since known they are coming. What if this is a trap? A play on Charles’s arrogance and Erik’s need for vengeance? Even now, the Shadow King may be reaching out with the dark tendrils of his mind, curling his grasp around the hearts of Erik’s men and turning them against him.

 _< <Don’t worry,”>>_ Charles says in his mind. _< <For now, at least, we are protected. I am stronger than he is - though not by much, I admit.>>_

A fool’s errand, perhaps. But Erik cannot simply turn away the opportunity to take this city. It feels somehow as if all his people depend on him, him and this very moment. His people, and their Muslim brothers - all those who follow the law of Moses, whose blood can be traced to their father Abraham so long ago. This is their holy ground. The foundation upon which their great families rest. Erik cannot allow the Christians with their false god and cruel laws to corrupt it.

“There,” Charles says - out loud, this time - as he lifts one bony arm and points.

The Fatimid army is attacking, as promised. As Erik had known they would. Erik can recognize them, even at this distance; the bright blue of their tunics and the chainmail which drapes their horses are unmistakable. Their cavalry are Arab and Berber, their archers men from the Sudan - skilled warriors, to be sure, but their main strength is in the Seljuk riders who have joined them. 

Erik scrambles forward across the rocky ground, pulling himself on his stomach to lean out over an outcropping, watching as the small, far-off figures of the Sudanese and the Turks exchange arrow fire with the defending Crusaders. 

“We’ll wait until they break through the gates,” Erik says to Wolverine, who has joined him on the outcrop. Erik’s gaze lands on the huge battering rams the Fatimids have brought with them - thick and heavy enough to break through stone, given enough time and manpower. “And then we’ll assault from the east. I need you to lead the men.”

“Why? What’ll you be doing instead?”

Erik grins. “I’m going after the Shadow King.”

\--

It is midday when the Fatimids finally break through the northern gate. Erik hears their loud roar and the earth-shaking crumble of stone, followed by the clash of swords and shields. Erik takes in a slow breath and pulls himself to his feet, fixing his gaze on the hazy horizon. It is time.

Charles’s hand is on his shoulder. A human hand, pink and soft. Erik turns to look at him, at his bright blue eyes and the set of his lips. “Take this,” Charles says, pressing something soft into his palm. “It will help.” 

Erik uncurls his fingers and looks down at the unfamiliar plant Charles has given him. A mushroom, with a long stalk and a red cap speckled with white. 

“What is this?” he says.

“Another kind of magic,” Charles says. “More ancient than you know. It will make you strong.” He nods. “Eat it.” He glances aside, toward the rest of the Nordmenn. “I brought enough for all of you. Enough to give you the kind of power your ancestors stole from you.”

“I know what this is,” Geitir says. His voice is soft, slow. “I’ve heard tales of this drug. The magic that used to make Nordmenn lose their minds in battle. To go - berserk.”

“Yes,” Charles says. “Berserking … it is your tradition, is it not? It is your birthright.”

“It has been illegal since before any of us were born!”

“Of course it has,” Charles says, with that small smile of his. “A drug that gives a man immeasurable strength? That makes him fight until he is spent? The kind of rage that turns brother against brother, making a warrior so thirsty for blood that he’d slit his own wrists if it meant he could drink?”

The crew has gone silent. Erik’s heart hammers in his chest.

“Northern laws forbade berserking, it is true,” Charles says. “But you are not living under Northern laws anymore. You live under mine. You live under the laws of Valhalla, of valkyrie and your honorable ancestors. Your ancestors, who _built_ your empire when they went a-viking under the influence of this magic!”

“Glory is not built by the hands of cowards. It is built with _power._ ” Wolverine says. He holds his hand out toward Charles. “I will take the first bite.”

Charles’s brows have lifted, but he looks pleased as he passes Wolverine six mushrooms. “Extra,” he says. “To account for your … condition.”

Wolverine tears off the caps with his thumbs and eats them, one after the other, his face like stone as he looks out across the men. 

Erik follows suit seconds later, tearing off the fleshy caps of the four mushrooms Charles has given him. The taste is atrocious - like nothing he’s ever tried before - and it takes effort just to finish chewing, and to swallow. The other three go down no easier, but he manages it somehow, even if he has to fight to keep the plant from coming right back up a minute later.

“The rest of you,” Charles says. “Look in your pockets.”

The men obey, each of them pulling out their own handful of red fungi, the doses tailored for their sizes. Erik watches as they chew the mushrooms. Every last man, willingly drugging himself for the will of the valkyrie. 

Arnvid gags on his dose, lurching forward as if to vomit, but Hrodny the Fair is on him a split second later, clapping a hand to his mouth and grunting for him to keep it in, to swallow it down. Arnvid obeys, but he’s left looking a little greener around the gills for his compliance.

“The effects will not set in until you’re already inside the city,” Charles tells Erik, taking him aside to murmur into his ear. “Be prepared for it, but do not try to fight it. Let the power guide you.”

And then he is letting go of Erik’s arm, changing back into the dark and skeletal shape of his natural form, features half-obscured by the drape of his cowl.

“Do not charge,” Erik orders, once the last of the men have chewed and swallowed their mushrooms. “We must not draw more attention to ourselves than is absolutely necessary. Not before we are already at their gates.”

They slip quiet down the mountainside instead, dust blooming beneath their skidding feet. Erik holds his breath, though he doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he’s already stepping out onto flat ground and into the shade of an olive tree. Olive trees - there are dozens of them, a small grove planted at the base of the mount: the Garden of Gethsemane. 

The smell of decay hangs sweet in the air. The trees are rotting from the inside out.

Erik clenches his teeth and leads them forward, down the dirt path toward Jerusalem. Charles drifts along at his side. He is more gliding than walking at this point, the hem of his cloak barely skimming the ground. The mere sight of him will strike fear into the hearts of the Crusaders. Of that, Erik has little doubt. 

The Kidron Valley is narrow, and they are well within sight of the walls, but no arrows rain down from above. Even as they stand in the shadow of the Golden Gate, no armies rush out to meet them. Erik can sense no metal - not nearby, anyway. There are only the bones buried beneath their feet, the bones of the martyrs from seventeen years’ past, who gave their lives defending this holy ground from Christian invaders.

 _< <You must keep going,>>_ Charles whispers into his mind. Erik realizes only then that he has gone still, standing with his eyes turned up to the Gate, unable to move, unable to think of anything but his own blood surging through his veins, reminding him that he is still alive. _< <Avenge them.>>_

Charles’s long fingers scrape down Erik’s spine and he inhales, a deep and shuddering breath.

“Stay alert,” he tells his men. “I do not sense their metal, but that means nothing. We could be walking into a trap.”

There’s the sharp sound of air being displaced as Charles spreads his wings wide behind him and they move forward, Erik the first to step through the Gate. His sword is in his hand, half-expecting a man to come charging at him the moment he rounds the corner - but there is nothing. The street is as empty within the city as it was without.

Erik keeps his blade drawn all the same, his gaze snapping after every movement: the flutter of a flag atop a tower, the flight of a bird overhead. 

“Where is everyone?” he murmurs, glancing sidelong at Charles. Surely the Shadow King did not send every one of his soldiers to defend the northern walls. He can hear the sound of that battle, muted somehow, even though it must not be too far away. 

But Charles just shakes his head. They are in the Shadow King’s territory now - and if the Shadow King wants to keep them in the darkness, then they will remain sightless.

The area inside the gate is open land, and they are too visible here, standing in the courtyard beneath the Temple Mount. Erik gestures, wide enough that Wolverine can see it from where he is, and they head north, toward the Muslim Quarter and the fighting. 

They move forward together in a loose-knit pack, but it only takes twenty yards for them to come under attack. There’s a sudden shuffle of boots on stone, and then men appear out of doorways and arches all around, Knights wearing white tunics marked with the blood-red cross of the Crusaders, holding shields that bear the same emblem. They seem to come out of nowhere. Erik swears, drawing his swords with arms that tremble as they never do in battle, because he cannot sense their metal, not any of it, even though they wear coats of mail and carry steel swords and iron maces. It is as if someone has blotted out his awareness of the earth itself. He could not be more blind if he had lost his very sight. The realization drops into his chest like a ball of iron; they are going to lose. They are all going to die, every last one of them, here on the streets of Erik’s Jerusalem, slaughtered like cattle. Their numbers are too few. Erik had been relying on his power every bit as much as Charles’s presence to win them this war. Without it, they will all be dead within minutes.

But if his Nordmenn were caught off their guard, the shock does not last for long. A cry sounds out behind him from a dozen, two dozen, a hundred throats, and with sudden fury they clash into battle against the enemy, sword against ax against shield. The sound knocks him from his stupor, and Erik brings his own blade up just in time to parry the blow of a tall man whose face is half-concealed by his helm. And then all he has to do is give in to it: the rage that boils in the marrow of his bones, that makes him want to kill every murdering Crusader who dares lay eyes on him. He slays two within the first minute, blood spattering on his face. A drop lands in his mouth; he can taste it on his tongue. 

These men, though ... they are not like the men Erik has fought before. It’s several minutes before Erik gets a good look at his opponent’s eyes, but when he does - they’re black, pure black, like ink spilled from the irises and into the sclera. Soulless. These are no mere humans. Maybe they were, once, a long time ago. But they are little more than puppets now. Creatures whose strings are held by the Shadow King.

Erik goes for the armpit. The mail is weaker there. But the moment the tip of his sword meets steel, he realizes - cannot _sense_ the Crusaders’ metal. But he can still control it.

His blade sinks in through the links of mail, piercing flesh. The Crusader falls and Erik grunts as he tugs the sword free, kicking back the man’s helm to plunge it down into his face: nose, mouth, and eyes all crunching in around his metal.

Good, Erik thinks, breathing heavily already as he yanks his sword out of the dead man’s skull. The Shadow King is strong, but not _that_ strong. He might be able to change what Erik can sense, but not what he can _do._ While this battle will not be easy, Erik can still win it. He can still fight.

Erik turns just in time to tear the sword from the hand of a man approaching him from behind, using it to sever the man’s own head. He’s disoriented, not knowing where the blows will come from, or in which direction the danger lies. Charles has disappeared - taken to the sky, Erik discovers a second later. Charles tells him ... by _pushing_ an image into his mind. 

It’s like a painting laid out before him, the entire city of Jerusalem - himself and his Nordmenn, tangled with a knot of Crusaders halfway into the Muslim Quarter. The Fatimids and their army breaking through the northern walls, grappling with archers and cavalry there. The scope of vision narrows, and Erik is focused in on himself. He can see Wolverine behind him and to his left, fighting three Crusaders at once. He sees Arnvid fall, dead, his throat slit by a foreign sword. He can see the man who is even now swinging his ax for the backs of Erik’s knees - but Erik reaches out, using Charles’s sight to guide him, twisting his power around the blade and hurtling it back into the attacker’s chest.

Finally, the thrill of battle is back, like a buzz in his veins, a copper taste underneath his tongue. Erik spins around, and his sword catches two men, slicing across their bellies, melting whatever metal it touches. He caves helms in upon themselves, crushing skulls until brain matter leaks out of men’s ears, until the red crosses on white tunics are invisible beneath the Christian blood that stains that unholy cloth.

Whatever it was Charles fed him, that drug, he can feel it beginning to work its effects. Slowly at first, like honey oozing out of his pores. Around him, he can see its effects in his men: a new frenzy in their eyes, a viciousness to their movements that wasn’t there before. 

Erik can’t mark the moment when it flips over for him, his brain snapping from lucidity to - something else. 

He loses track of time.

He kills a man with his sword, while with his other hand he drives a knife up between someone’s ribs. He swears he can feel the iron in their blood as it seeps out over his knuckles. All the colors in the world are brighter than they ever were before. Blood like wine, bone like snow. 

Rage. A cruel and fierce _need_ that claws its way through his insides, threatening to split him open like an overripe plum. He has never been more 

aware 

of every piece of his body, whether they act in unison or opposition, like he can be in a thousand places at once, tearing up the roots of this city and strangling the invaders with the long gory ropes of their own intestines.

He needs

to _kill_

He needs to kill them **all.**

he’s in the street near the old marketplace, someone’s head rolling down toward the gutter, his own breath stinging like ice in his lungs

a war cry, something in Latin, he forgets the language, forgets how to understand, but  
he kills the man who gave the cry  
\- he reaches through melted chainmail and tears out the heart out, still beating, in the palm of his bare hand.

The Jewish Quarter. Or what used to be. 

(Someone is ringing the bells in the cathedral.) 

He doesn’t know if the man is Christian or Muslim or Nordman, but he kills him anyway and digs his heel into his dead flaccid crotch.

_blood smeared on cobblestone_

Erik drags his fingers back across his scalp, smearing blood through his hair, and laughs - of course  
of course: Erik the Red.

They’re running now, all of them, every man racing through the streets and alleyways and open courtyards, slipping on the blood and meat that are strewn in the roads. Erik thinks he can smell something burning.

Geitir dies, too, somewhere in the city. Hrodny the Fair as well.  
Erik doesn’t remember  
how they fell.

He barely recognizes  
this place  
like this  
now  
when everything he sees  
is shaded red  
red  
red  
red  
red  
red  
red

red

He can’t figure out why the city is tilted, and they’re all fighting on the diagonal scale, and he can’t figure out if he should care. All around him are the dead and the dying. He likes them that way. He can taste their bodies in his mouth. 

He can’t figure out why he is crawling on his hands and knees through the sewers. 

No, that’s not right. Through the street. 

Everything is wet and hot. He feels like his skin is peeling off. 

Somehow he’s found himself back here again, kneeling in the courtyard at the Temple Mount, mouth hanging open as he gazes up at the glittering gold Dome of the Rock.

There is the sound of air against wings, and Charles lands next to him, a dark shadow smeared against the sky, his valravn perched on one shoulder. 

“Yes,” Charles says, steady, as if answering a question. “You’re right. I think he is here.” His wings fold in, vanishing beneath his cloak. “The Shadow King always did think himself a God.”

Erik pulls himself to his feet slowly, even though his legs are shaking.

The Temple Mount. The site of the temple of Solomon, the place where Abraham bound his son Isaac for sacrifice, the resting place of G-d’s own presence. To imagine it defiled in this way is enough to give Erik strength to kill a hundred thousand men.

“Save that strength,” Charles advises. “You’ll likely be needing it.”

Erik meets Charles’s many eyes, still breathing hard. Charles is the only thing in the world that seems stable right now. Erik is grateful to him for it.

“Let’s go,” Charles says.

The battle behind them fades away into distance, and then into silence. Erik cannot tell if it is Charles, focusing his attention, or simply the drug giving him a sense of singular purpose. Or the Shadow King himself, perhaps, enfolding both of them into his territory.

They climb the steps toward the temple. Erik’s legs ache, but he barely notices the pain. It’s almost over. Or it’s almost beginning. He isn’t sure which.

The fighting in the streets never drew this close to the Temple Mount - the arches overhead are unstained by blood, the stones underfoot clean and grey. With every step closer, Erik can feel himself growing sicker, like an infection is festering in his stomach. 

“Don’t worry,” Charles says. The door to the Dome of the Rock looms ahead, blue and gold gilt. “I will protect your mind to the best of my ability. He will not be able to control you while I am here.”

The doors open without being touched and it suddenly feels as if something has hooked itself beneath Erik’s sternum, an inescapable desire to walk on, to enter. 

“You can do this,” Charles whispers, quiet enough that his words are barely audible at all. “I know you can.”

They pass into darkness - and then light.

Erik has never been inside the Dome. To enter is to break _halakha_ , Jewish law. The original temple of Solomon was destroyed centuries ago, and no one since has been able to identify where the holy of holies was located - the home of the Divine Presence, of G-d. It is forbidden for anyone but a high priest to go before G-d in the holy of holies. For a Jew, setting foot inside this temple at all is an abomination. 

But the Shadow King is here, his evil resting within these walls. Erik may have long since lost his faith, but he still whispers a silent prayer to the G-d that abandoned him so long ago. _Forgive me. If you must strike me down, then strike me down - but not before I have defeated my enemy._

His footsteps echo on the fine tile, loud and ringing. The interior of the temple is grand - whatever damage had been done during the siege has been repaired. The floors are partially carpeted with Persian reds, the marble pillars shined to perfection. A large gold crucifix hangs overhead, the corpse’s side shimmering with ruby blood. 

And in the center of the temple, below the peak of the dome, is a throne. And on the throne, a man. One of the fattest men Erik has ever seen, Egyptian, dressed in slippery silks and barefoot, a crown resting upon his balding head. He has the sickly look of someone who gained his weight far too quickly; he does not bear it the way a naturally-large man would. It all but drips off him, rolling at his neck and sagging from his jowls and arms. Even from this distance Erik can see that the skin under his eyes has gone yellow. 

“Finally,” the man says. His voice comes out in a low rasp. “You have come.”

He lifts one beringed hand and the doors behind them slam shut. Erik feels his heart stumble in his chest; the drug Charles gave him has not entirely worn off yet, even though it must have been hours - the colors in the room blend together, and there’s an odd buzzing sound in Erik’s ears that wasn’t there before.

“So this is your champion,” the man - Shadow King - says. He rises from his throne with great effort, struggling to waddle closer on legs that are clearly unaccustomed to bearing his weight. “Let me get a look at him.” 

The Shadow King comes to a stop, panting, just a few paces from Erik. Erik keeps his hand on his sword, unsure what Charles expects him to do - if he ought to make his move now, to slice off this man’s head before he has time to prepare for it, or if this is all part of some larger game. This close, Erik can smell the wine seeping out of the Shadow King’s pores, can hear the delicate clink of his jewelry.

“Erik,” the Shadow King says. “Is that what they’re calling you now? I’d say it’s a pleasure, but under the circumstances ....” He laughs, but it comes out as half a cough. “My name is Amahl Farouk, and this is my city.” His grin widens; his teeth are stained purple with berry juice. “Welcome home.”

\--


	5. Chapter 5

PART FIVE

The sun shall be darkened,  
earth sinks in the sea  
Glide from the heaven  
the glittering stars;  
Smoke-reek rages  
and reddening fire:  
The high heat licks  
against heaven itself.

\- The Gylfaginning

\--

3.

They stand there, the three of them - Erik does not count the Shadow King’s guards - in the center of this holy place, beneath the golden cross. Erik can hear the Shadow King’s heavy breathing, and it sounds nearly as loud as his own pulse. Only Charles stands unaffected, with his perpetual calm and composure.

Erik’s palm is perspiring, clenched around the hilt of his sword. The Shadow King seems weak - physically, at least. It would be no great feat to slay him. A simple upward stroke of his blade through all those layers of fat and his guts would be spilling out across the carpet.

But something that sounds suspiciously like Charles’s voice in his head tells him to stay his hand, and so he does. 

The Shadow King clasps his hands behind his back and takes a few steps away, still smiling. “Well,” he says, glancing back to Charles and nodding. “He’s a strong one. Surprising, seeing as he’s a Jew. I thought your sort only went for those hardy young North-men. They might be brutes, but they get the job done, more often than not.” One bushy brow goes up. “Or is it his power you were so keen on? I saw him using it, through the eyes of my little friends.”

He means the Crusaders he took as his puppets, Erik realizes a fraction of a second later. Those men Erik killed.

The room is still shifting, the floor now at a strange angle to the ceiling. For a moment the Shadow King himself seems to be changing in size, growing wider and taller - but then Erik blinks, and all returns to normal.

“You knew I would come for you,” Charles says. Erik notices it all over again, how strange and jarring his voice sounds, in this form. “You seem calm, for a man who will not leave this place alive.”

“What?” the Shadow King scoffs. “Killed by your little monkey here? I doubt that. You see, I have power of my own.” He lifts his hands, palms-up. “I did not choose this host body idly. I think you’ll find your champion and I are well-matched.” 

The crucifix above trembles - and then falls, crashing to the ground with a power that makes the floor beneath them shake. Erik, small mercies, manages not to stumble back in his alarm. The dust cloud clears, and when it does, the Shadow King is back at his throne, seated once more. 

“So,” he says, settling one elbow on his knee and reaching for a goblet of wine with his other hand. “Let’s have your champion give us a show, shall we? No magic allowed.”

He snaps his fingers and two of his Egyptian guards step forward, drawing sickle-shaped _khopesh_ swords in unison. They approach Erik on steady feet, blank as only truly mindless men can be. 

Erik waits until they are less than two yards away - and then he throws out his hand and uses his power to grasp onto their blades, twisting them round in their grasps and slicing off both guards’ heads in a single motion. The bodies drop, twitching, to the floor. 

The Shadow King slams his goblet down on the armrest of the throne so hard the wine within slops over the side and splatters the ground. “I said no magic!” he bellows.

“Sorry,” Erik says. “But I don’t play by your rules.” 

He darts forward, sword grasped in both hands. The Shadow King’s remaining guards - and there are five, to Erik’s count - move forward in unison. Played like chess pieces at the Shadow King’s fingertips, of course - but that makes them predictable. One man can only control the movements of so many bodies at one time.

Erik kills the first guard by stabbing him in the gut - and he ducks, just in time to avoid the slash of another’s _khopesh_ , pulling his sword free and swinging it low to cut the tendons at the second man’s heels, sending him dropping down to his knees and screaming in wordless agony. 

But Erik underestimated the Shadow King’s concentration; the puppet guards use no formation that he can identify, and they fight as separate entities, not a unified force. It means more men to keep track of, more blades that he cannot sense. He only prays his hands do not slip on the hilt of his sword.

He slits a guard’s throat and, in the same movement, kicks the toe of his boot with the full force into the face of the man on his knees. Erik feels the crunch of cartilage as his nose breaks, Erik’s strength pushing it up into his head, sending bone cracking into his brain. He dies instantly.

That leaves two. Erik kills them more easily, one right after the other. The last one’s head rolls away, toward the throne, coming to a rest inches from the Shadow King’s bare foot.

“That,” Erik snaps, “was not magic.” 

“Not bad,” the Shadow King says. He still has not risen from his throne, even now, absent his only apparent protection. “Perhaps our mutual friend chose wisely after all, in picking you.”

Erik glances back at Charles, who still has made no move to step in. Erik knows Charles said he could not kill the Shadow King, that the man was a powerful mind-witch like Charles himself, but - 

_< <I cannot,>>_ Charles says inside his mind. _< <Like this, he is too powerful. I can’t attack him and protect you at the same time. But ... his true form is outside this host. It’s his spirit. Kill his body, and I’ll take care of his soul.>>_

Erik turns to look back at the Shadow King, but before their eyes can meet something heavy slams into Erik’s chest and he goes flying back, carried yards across the room and thrown against the wall. It’s an altar, Erik realizes once his mind has cleared, and it’s pressed against him, pinning him here against the marble. Erik groans and pushes against the table with all his strength, but it makes no difference; as long as the Shadow King has hold of this body’s power, Erik will be stuck here. His stomach hurts like its been ruptured, the pain near unbearable, but he forces himself to push it down and away. Later. Whatever his wounds, he’ll tend to them later.

“Now,” the Shadow King says, pulling himself up out of his throne, grasping onto the armrest to aid in his efforts, “we fight on _my_ terms.”

Erik tries to reach for the rings on the Shadow King’s fat fingers, or the necklace he wears - but both are gold, their metal not strong enough for his power. Not as he is now.

Somehow it takes him a moment to remember his sword, still clenched in his hand. He’s reluctant to let it out of his grip, but at his waist … the silver knife.

Erik feeds his magic into the knife and sends it tearing across the room, heading straight for the Shadow King, who dodges to the left just in time. His stomach knots up and that sends another spike of pain jolting through his gut, sharp enough that, for a moment, Erik’s vision goes white around the edges.

The knife, though - he casts his gaze about until he finds it again, hovering in the air some twenty yards above the floor. He sends it shooting straight down, aiming for the Shadow King’s skull, and this time, when the man dodges, Erik keeps the knife trained on him, following him wherever he moves. And he does move so slowly, too cumbersome in this unfamiliar body, so fat that he can barely walk - 

The Shadow King throws out a hand and a stone vase hurls across the room, colliding with the altar that’s already pressed to Erik’s chest. Agony explodes in Erik’s mind, brilliant and silver, flashing like lightning through every fiber of his body. His stomach feels as if it’s being split open, as if the Shadow King is driving a blade into his gut instead of merely throwing objects against it.

Erik loses track of the knife, and when he finally manages to open his eyes again, the weapon is nowhere to be seen and the Shadow King is three steps away. He lifts a hand and both the vase and altar table crush in harder against Erik’s torso.

He yells - and he feels first one rib snap, and then a second. Charles is in his head, a roiling mass of his own kind of pain, panicking, desperate, cutting off Erik’s access to physical sensation in his stomach as quickly as he can. But it’s not quick enough. It is as if all Erik’s blood has gone boiling hot, and all of it, pooling in his belly - 

The Shadow King is grinning and he lurches forward again, the pressure against Erik’s chest and stomach intensifying. Erik can feel unconsciousness threatening the edges of his awareness - the knife is gone, kicked away, somewhere he can’t see it - and if he can’t see it, it’s useless without his ability to _sense_ it - 

_< <Erik!>>_

Charles’s voice is inside his head. Why is Charles’s voice in his head? Erik feels as if he’s floating in a dark cloud, rolling down deep into the ocean.

_< <Erik - the sword!>>_

Erik sucks in a breath that makes it feel as if his body is being torn in half - and he reaches for the last threads of his magic and lifts his arm. The sword pulls from his grip and flies forth. He can sense the moment that the steel sheaths itself in the Shadow King’s gut because it’s the same moment that his sense of things comes swarming back to him. Blood and muscle and fat and stomach contents hot around metal - Erik yanks _up_ and the blade slices through ribs and punctures the Shadow King’s swollen heart.

There’s a high-pitched, wretched screech, and metal everywhere, all throughout the room, through the city and beyond, pulsing beneath the surface of the earth. The altar and vase drop to the ground and Erik crumples to his knees a moment later, one arm curling defensively around his stomach, vomiting blood across the tile - 

He looks across the floor at the Shadow King’s massive form, slumped on the marble, his eyes wide, the irises ringed with white as a dark pool quickly spreads beneath him. The Shadow King blinks, slow, and only once.

An entirely new agony rips through Erik’s mind. It is like a dark blade carving through his brain, something black and cold and lethal. His head feels as if it is crusted in ice. Someone’s screaming, and there is cool stone against Erik’s cheek, the taste of blood thick and viscous in his mouth. 

He thinks he sees something like black smoke billow out of the Shadow King’s mouth - but it’s nothing, a hallucination, something like

a dream

and he sees Charles stretching his wings wide, casting the temple into darkness as he

opens his mouth and

consumes that shadow 

whole.

\--

2.

Pain.

Burning.

He is on fire.

The flames lick at his skin and he watches his own flesh bubble, watches his exposed bones turn to black. 

He is a single voice among a hundred, all of them screaming to a G-d who has decided not to care.

He is a boy crawling on his hands and knees, palms bloody from raw sewer stone.

He is an orphan without parents, without a people.

He is thousands of bodies turned to ashes in the sky.

He is squeezing his eyes shut against sunlight as strong arms carry him out into day. When he dares to look, he sees blue eyes and red lips. A soft hand stroking his brow over and over, a softer voice in his mind, whispering: _All is well._

He is the pain in his stomach slowly fading away, bones knit together with invisible thread.

He falls.

\--

1.

When he wakes again, it is with a splitting headache. He is lying on the stone courtyard outside the Temple Mount, cradled in Charles’s arms, his sword a thin bright line of metal some yards away. But he can sense it.

“You’re back,” Charles says, smiling as he kisses Erik’s forehead. “You did it.”

Erik moans and presses the heel of his hand to his temple; there’s an unbearable pain drilling its way through his skull. 

“That pain will pass,” Charles tells him, pressing his hand atop Erik’s own. “In time. You were bleeding internally - I was able to heal that, but this … it’s an injury to your mind, and not one I can fix.”

Erik lowers his hand, puts both palms flat on the ground and manages to push himself up so that he’s sitting, the back of one wrist brushing the outside of Charles’s thigh. “What do you mean?”

Charles shakes his head. “Right as he died, the Shadow King … did something to your mind. I’m not sure what. But your body is well. Besides a few broken ribs and the bleed in your stomach, your other injuries were relatively minor.”

“The others?” Erik asks, turning his gaze out toward the city.

“All dead,” Charles says. “Except for the Wolverine, of course.”

“All?”

“The Nordmenn, the Turks, the Fatimids. The Christians. This city is empty.”

The streets are slick and red with blood, glistening in the late afternoon sunlight.

Erik’s head is throbbing. 

“Come on,” Charles says gently, touching his elbow with the tips of his fingers. “Let’s go.”

\--

Charles takes him back to the Jewish Quarter, or what was the Jewish Quarter, before the Crusaders took over. They break into an empty house, and pretend to ignore the corpses of the family who once lived there. 

Erik sleeps. When he wakes, the corpses are gone.

\-- 

Days blur. Charles brings him food and Erik eats, but nothing fills the hollow void that has taken up residence in his core. At night he still dreams of the day his people were killed, and this time, there is nothing Charles can do to suppress it.

The only thing that makes the days worth living is Charles, and how he smiles when Erik looks at him a certain way. But there’s a quiet sort of sadness in Charles, too. Charles probably thinks Erik can’t sense it. He barely can at all. It’s like a slight tremor through the bond that connects their minds, a shadow that haunts them both. 

It makes Erik feel sick.

\--

When he’s well enough, Erik walks out into the city. The bodies have been cleared from the streets. Charles tells him that Egypt has sent more armies eastward toward Jerusalem, with plans to retake the city. The Seljuk Turks travel south. The Jews who settled in the north will hear of the holy land’s freedom in their dreams, and they too will come eventually, to rebuild and to live. Here, in the sacred city of their ancestors.

But for now, the city is still barren. Even the birds seem loathe to pass overhead, or perhaps that is simply a figment of Erik’s own mind. It plays tricks on him, these days. He sees dead men in empty doorways, children drenched in blood, lying face-down in the lakes and pools.

He is haunted by the ghost of himself as a child, a boy who keeps saying one word, over and over.

_Shalom._

\--

Wolverine and Charles whisper at night, as Erik drifts off to sleep. Never quite loud enough for him to overhear.

\--

He paces for hours in the courtyard at the Dome of the Rock, weeping, begging for forgiveness. Begging for G-d to hear his prayer. _Forgive me. Forgive me._

\--

One day he screams for eight hours straight, until his throat is raw and he coughs up blood.

It’s just that the terror was inescapable. Like something dark and insidious latched on within him and refusing to let go.

“When will it end?” he hears Wolverine asking Charles, who has his face turned to the wall. 

Charles says: “It won’t.”

\--

He wakes in the middle of the night. Charles is lying next to them, their bodies curled together, Charles’s hand laced with his atop his stomach.

“What is it?” Erik asks. His throat is still ragged.

“Hmm? Nothing,” Charles murmurs. He presses his face to the back of Erik’s neck. His nose is cold against Erik’s skin. “Just - I love you. No matter what. Always. I’m sorry he did this to you. I wish …. I should have been able to protect you.”

Erik squeezes Charles’s hand, as tight as he can, and hopes he never has to let go.

\--

Erik loses four days to nightmares that do not cease when he wakes.

He can still feel his skin burning for hours afterward, like a fire has been lit inside his bones, one that will never go out.

\--

He is walking outside the city when the Wolverine finds him.

He senses the sword before he sees the man - but there he is, stepping out from between the olive trees. 

“You came,” Erik says. “I knew you would come.”

Wolverine’s expression does not change. He just steps closer, with that naked metal in his hand. Erik is trembling; he’s been trembling for weeks now. Another thing, he suspects, that Charles would tell him won’t ever go away.

“I’m sorry,” Wolverine says. 

“Don’t be.” Erik turns to face him, presses his lips into a weak smile. “It’s what I want. It’s … merciful.”

“I’m sorry anyway.”

Wolverine plunges the sword into Erik’s chest. There’s pain, of course, but all Erik can think about is the metal within him, his shredded heart still trying to beat right up until the moment that Wolverine twists the blade.

Erik chokes, blood dribbling down his chin. For a moment, he sees the ghost of his childhood self, in that brief second before the darkness takes him.

Again, the ghost smiles and says: _Shalom._

\--

0.

Erik opens his eyes.

Charles’s hand is on his cheek, his lips grazing Erik’s in a small, almost chaste kiss. The pain is gone. 

“You’re awake at last,” Charles says.

Erik sinks his hands into Charles’s hair and kisses him like it’s the only thing he wants to do for the rest of time. Charles laughs against his mouth, and he’s still smiling when they finally break apart, bodies fit together like two parts of a whole. 

“Is this it?” Erik asks. “This is the end?”

“No.” Charles shakes his head, his fingers drifting over Erik’s cheek, his throat, his chest. “This never ends.”

\--

Fin.


End file.
